“Jesus: The Good Pastor”
Rev. Rolf Preus| Good Shepherd Sunday| April 19, 2026| St. John 10: 11-16
The most loved psalm in the Psalter is Psalm 23, which begins, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.” It’s a beautiful psalm. It should be committed to memory, just as we memorize the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles’ Creed. Who is this LORD who is our shepherd? Jesus answers that question by saying, “I am the good shepherd.” Jesus is the LORD who provides all our needs, gives us peace with God, restores our spiritual strength, enlightens us in our darkest hours, delivers us from death, protects us from all evil, and guarantees us eternal life in heaven.
“The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” He dies for them. He redeems them. He purchases them. He makes them his own. They belong to him because he bought them. St. Paul said to the pastors in Ephesus, “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to feed the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.” God purchased the church with his own blood. Here is how we confess this precious truth in the Small Catechism:
I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.
St. Peter, in the Epistle Lesson for today, describes what was involved in Jesus laying down his life for the sheep. He writes:
Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: “Who committed no sin, nor was guile found in His mouth:” who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sin, might live for righteousness–by whose stripes you were healed.
The first thing we must know about the good shepherd is that he loves his sheep. Other shepherds profit from their sheep. Why else have sheep if not to make a profit? Other shepherds fleece the sheep and sell the wool. They butcher the sheep and sell the meat. The sheep exist to benefit the shepherd. They are only dumb animals, after all. They are clothing and food for others.
The good shepherd is different from all other shepherds. He doesn’t fleece the sheep or butcher the sheep or use the sheep to enrich himself. Just the opposite, he left the wealth of heaven, came to this earth to live in poverty, and in humbling himself all the way to the death of the cross gave his holy life for the sheep.
Sheep like us. Foolish, headstrong, stubborn, and prone to wander. Just like us. We think we know more than God but without God’s Word our spiritual discernment is nil. Worse than that, it is the exact opposite of wisdom. If we don’t hear the shepherd’s voice, we will invariably make the wrong decisions. We’ll trust in our own wisdom and get lost in our own sin. Sheep aren’t very bright. We are all spiritually stupid by nature.
Jesus knows us. Not just because he’s the omniscient God. He knows us because he “Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” You feel temptation? Jesus felt it. You feel guilt. Jesus felt it. You experience the pain of having failed God and failed those you love. Jesus experienced that pain. All without sinning. Living a holy and blameless life. Being and doing what is righteous, he bore our sins. So, he knows our failures. He understands them better than we do.
He knows us. This is an intimate knowledge comparable to the Father knowing the Son and the Son knowing the father in eternity. To know us means choosing us, loving us, and remaining faithful to us. His knowing us is what brings us to know him. When Jesus says he knows his sheep he is saying that he chooses them in love. When he says that his sheep know him, he is saying that they trust in him and follow him. They believe in him and imitate him. To know Jesus is to rely on him to take away our sin and make us acceptable to God. To know Jesus is to imitate his life of humility.
Who would want to destroy the trust of the sheep in the good shepherd? The wolf. The devil. He’s vicious and he’s clever. He’ll do what he must do to destroy the sheep that belong to the good shepherd. The good shepherd cares for his sheep by sending under shepherds to serve them in his name. We call them pastors. The word pastor means shepherd. The pastor doesn’t own the sheep. The good pastor does. But since the pastor works for the good shepherd, he cares for them as Jesus would care for them, faithfully warning the sheep about the wolves who are seeking to destroy them. This means that the pastor must not only preach and teach the pure gospel, but he must also expose and refute false teachings and false teachers. That doesn’t always win friends. The wolf knows this. That’s why he loves hirelings, that is, the hired hands who pretend to be pastors.
Pastors are called by God through the congregation they serve. Hirelings are hired by the congregation they serve. There’s a difference. Obviously, both pastors and hirelings get a paycheck, so you could say that the pastor is hired. After all, he works for his pay. But there is a crucial difference between the true pastor and the hireling. The true pastor works for Jesus. The hireling works for himself. The true pastor warns the flock about the wolf. The faithful pastor points out false doctrine. False teaching is how the wolf scatters the sheep. He lies to them to lead them away from the good shepherd. The faithful pastor preaches and teaches against popular errors that would attack the faith of the sheep.
Speaking from experience, I can tell you that this isn’t always easy. Faithful pastors must preach against those who teach that the Bible has errors in it. They must preach against those who teach that our good works help get us to heaven. They must preach against those who deny that baptism is for babies and that it washes away our sins. They must preach against those who deny that the Lord’s Supper is really Christ’s body and blood and really gives us the forgiveness of all our sins. They must preach against religious unionism. That’s the practice of joining together in worship with those who promote false teachings. They must preach against those who would substitute their political ideology for the gospel and pawn if off as true Christianity. They must preach against the popular creed of our day that in the name of love and tolerance denigrates marriage, celebrates sexual perversions, and denies the God ordained differences between men and women. The faithful pastor must risk his popularity to be faithful to the good shepherd and his voice.
The faithful preacher preaches Christ. He preaches that Jesus alone takes away sin and that he has done so by his vicarious obedience, suffering, and death. He preaches that God forgives us our sins freely for Christ’s sake. He preaches that repentance is necessary because only the sin sick soul will seek the good physician’s help. He preaches that God’s grace is greater than our sin. He preaches the new life of holiness lived under the grace of God. He preaches Christ. He preaches out of love for Christ and Christ’s sheep.
The hireling doesn’t care about the sheep. He’s working for pay. He knows where the money is and what side of his bread is buttered. He won’t take a controversial stand, even when souls are at stake. He sees the wolf coming and runs away, piously asserting that it is love for the sheep that keeps him from taking a stand when it is self-serving cowardice. The hireling doesn’t work for Christ. He works for money, prestige, power, or whatever other carnal benefit he can receive. When the wolf comes, he runs. There are always more hirelings than faithful pastors. Some years ago, there was a poll that showed pastors were the most highly respected profession while used car salesmen were the lowest respected profession. That’s because people care more about their cars than they do about their souls and will demand more from the fellow who sells them a car than they will of the pastor who stands in the pulpit and preaches to them. Hirelings abound because people don’t care about the condition of their own souls. They have itching ears for doctrine that will flatter their flesh. So, they hire men to do it.
God will be sending you a new pastor. That’s an exciting time for a parish. You may have some hope tinged with some apprehension about your new pastor. Let me give you some pastoral advice on how to treat your new pastor. Make demands. I’m not talking about calling him on his day off to complain about somebody in the congregation. No. Demand from him God’s word. Ask him questions. Go to him. Talk to him. Bring up whatever problem you have that you want God to address. Require him to give you the Word of God. A hireling might be annoyed by the bother, but a true pastor will love you for it. The true pastor knows that the sheep are not his. They belong to the good shepherd.
St. Peter writes, “For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” Rome claims that the pope is the universal bishop, that is, the bishop of the Catholic Church. He’s not. Jesus is. Rome claims that St. Peter was the first pope. But St. Peter refutes papal claims to supremacy over the entire Christian church on earth when he says that it is Jesus who is the pastor and overseer of our souls.
Jesus feeds and cares for his church through the pastors he sends to serve. How do we know if our pastor is truly an under shepherd of the good shepherd and not a hireling? Listen once more to these words of Jesus from our Gospel reading for today: “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.” The sheep are united together as one because they all hear the same voice. You cannot know if your pastor is faithful unless you know the shepherd’s voice.
We Lutherans are blessed with a catechism that contains the six main parts of the Christian religion: the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism, the Office of the Keys, and the Lord’s Supper. Our catechism provides clear and simple explanations of each of these six chief parts of Christian teaching. Some Lutherans are under the false impression that the catechism is a textbook for children for them to learn when they are young and then to set aside. The catechism is for you, no matter what your age, no matter what kind of education you have. We should all be students of the catechism all our lives. In this way we will always recognize our shepherd’s voice and we will know what to require of the pastors who serve us. They are not given to us to make us feel good about ourselves, to serve as social status symbols, or to organize religious people to do religious things. A pastor is a shepherd. His job is to speak on behalf of Jesus, to provide the sheep with the voice of their shepherd, to preach against their sins, calling on them to repent, and to preach the forgiveness of sins that flows from the blood Jesus shed on the cross and that God freely gives to his sheep. This is the gospel. A sermon without the gospel isn’t worth preaching or listening to. A preacher who doesn’t preach Christ crucified for sinners is a hireling, and not an under shepherd of the good shepherd.
May God grant this congregation a pastor who loves Christ and his sheep and faithfully proclaims Christ’s gospel. May he give us all ears to hear the voice of Christ, the good shepherd, who gave his life for the sheep. In Jesus’s name. Amen