Well, you can open your Bible again tonight to the book of Zechariah. We are going through this book on Sunday evenings. We have looked at the first half of the book of Zechariah. And at some point, we pointed out the fact that chapters one through eight kind of form a section in the book of Zechariah where God is encouraging the people They have come back from the Babylonian captivity for the purpose of rebuilding the temple. They began that work, and then opposition brought it to a halt, and for about 15 years, no work was done on the temple. The foundation had been laid, an altar had been built, offering sacrifices were being offered, but the work of building had ceased, and so God raised up Haggai and Zechariah, to stir up the people to get back at the work of building the temple, and they did. And so God gave Zechariah a number of visions, and in those visions, God was communicating a message to those who were building the temple that they were going to prosper, that they would succeed in that work, despite the fact that they're a small number and they're surrounded by enemies. They were going to accomplish the job, and not only that, but God was going to bless Israel again. And there were promises that were made in those visions that are yet to be fulfilled, promises that God will fulfill in the last days. But the second half of Zechariah begins in chapter nine, and really it divides also into two parts, chapters nine through 11, and then chapters 12 through 14. So we're kind of in the middle of the first part of the second half of Zechariah, and there is this, shepherd illustration that the Lord uses. He's referring to, it begins really in chapter nine and verse 16 where God says, the Lord their God shall save them in that day as the flock of his people. And though the Lord doesn't directly call himself their shepherd, he's expressing his care over them and protection of them as a shepherd would over his flock. And then in chapter 10 that we looked at last Sunday evening, we talked about the fact that the shepherds didn't always do their duty like they should have. And the people followed them and there's always trouble when you follow a false or disobedient shepherd. But that shepherding idea continues in chapter 11 that we're gonna look at tonight. And let me say, first of all, the Lord is the only true and faithful shepherd. But he does provide under-shepherds for our benefit. Every under-shepherd is, a good under-shepherd strives to be faithful. But we are human, and so we are not as faithful as God, obviously. So we wanna put our confidence in the Lord as our shepherd, but we also recognize he does provide under-shepherds. And as we look at this text tonight, what I wanna do is show you what's there, but I wanna make some application even for us today. But the Lord does give us under shepherds. In John 21 and verse 16, after Peter had affirmed his love for the risen Christ, Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. And the word feed has the idea of shepherding. It could be translated shepherd my sheep. In 1 Peter 5, 2, then Peter writes to elders, feed the flock of God, which is among you taking the oversight thereof. And he uses the same word that Jesus told him, feed my sheep. Peter says to elders, shepherd, the flock of God. In Acts chapter 20 and verse 28, Paul is challenging the Ephesian elders to take care of the church, and he says, feed the church of God. And again, he uses that same word, that idea of being an under-shepherd, of shepherding the flock of God. And so the Lord gives those under shepherds. But I also want you to think of yourself. You know, we think about those and those men. Peter was an elder. Paul was an elder. He's writing to the Ephesian elders, the office of pastor. And God certainly gives us pastors to shepherd us. But every believer and any believer can be a shepherd. Everybody's not called to the office of pastor in that sense, but we all can do some shepherding. If you're a parent, you're a Christian parent, you're a shepherd. God is the shepherd. God is the one who ultimately has to be the one to take care of your children. but you're a shepherd, you're an under-shepherd, your job is to shepherd them, to guide them, to teach them, to be that shepherd to them in their youth as they're growing up. If you're a Sunday school teacher, you might feel a sense of shepherding over your Sunday school class where you're concerned about the spiritual well-being of those that you're teaching and you care about that and you exercise a ministry of under-shepherding. But even just in our personal relationships, there's a certain amount of shepherding, if you will, that goes on. In Romans 15 and verse 14, Paul wrote to the church in Rome. He said, I am persuaded of you, my brethren, that you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. That's a part of shepherding, admonishing, reminding one another of our spiritual responsibilities. And that verse is not written to pastors, it's written to the church, to the members of the church. Admonish one another, look out for one another's spiritual well-being. It's a form of shepherding the flock. And yes, the pastor has a primary responsibility, but we all have some obligations, some opportunities, and responsibilities in the matter of shepherding. Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church, he said, we adjourn to you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient toward all men, and I would submit to you, what is that but shepherding the flock of God? So, you may not have the primary responsibility of shepherding, but you have some shepherding responsibilities even though you haven't been called to the office of pastor or elder. And so again, we're going to look at what Zechariah 11 tells us about three shepherds, and then make some applications about shepherding in the church today. And I want to just note at the outset, the outline that I'm going to give you tonight kind of comes from Warren Wiersbe. The title and the basic outline, I changed a little bit of the wording. But as I was reading his commentary on this chapter, it's there, it's obvious when you see it. He pointed it out, and I'm looking at that, and yep, there it is. So the first three verses of this chapter, we will see the woeful shepherds. And then in verses four through 14, we're gonna see what I'm gonna call the wounded shepherd. And then in verses 15 through 17, the wicked shepherd, and that's the way this chapter divides naturally, because there are those three separate persons that are being referenced in this chapter. And so as we look at this, note first of all, the woeful shepherds, and we use that term because it says in verse three, there is a voice of the howling of the shepherds. They're howling. That word means to make a loud sound. It usually is an expression of pain or sadness or some strong emotion. So these shepherds are howling. They're in woe. And what is the cause of their howling? Well, verse one tells us, Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars. And then howl, fir tree, for the cedar is fallen because the mighty are spoiled. Howl, Oaks of Bashan, for the forest of the vintages come down, and there's a voice of howling of the shepherds, for their glory is spoiled. A voice of the roaring of young lions, for the pride of Jordan is spoiled. They're howling because of the destruction that is coming to their land. And the Lord speaks of the land of Lebanon, and then Bashan, which would have been northern Israel on the east side of the Jordan River. He talks about the Jordan Valley, young lions roaring because the pride of Jordan is spoiled. When you think about Israel in Bible times, there were lions in the land of Israel back in those days. I mean, David talks about killing a bear and a lion that came after a sheep. Samson killed a lion. One of David's mighty men by the name of Benaiah went down into a pit on a snowy day and slew a lion. There were lions there and evidently they lived and hid in the shrubbery around the Jordan Valley. They lived down in the Jordan Valley. But God is going to destroy the entire land. This fire is going to come down and destroy the entire land. The mighty oaks of Bashan, the mighty cedars and fir trees of Lebanon. Nothing is going to be left. This fire is going to devour everything. It's going to destroy the entire land. They're howling because of that. And you notice in verse one, the Lord says to Lebanon, open your doors, that the fire can devour your cedars. Why would the Lord say, open your doors? What he's saying there is this is so certain, you may as well just accept it because this is going to happen. Just open your doors and let it come because it's going to come. I thought about that and I was reminded of a pastor, was actually the assistant pastor of a church that I ministered in when I was in college. And it was a strange thing to me, but he would, on Sundays when he would go to church, he would leave his front door wide open. Why do you do that? Well, if somebody wants to break into my house, They don't have to break the door down to get in. I just leave the door open. If they're gonna go in, if they're gonna go, they're gonna go. So just leave the door open and make it easy for them and they don't tear up my door when they go in. You know, okay, well, but that's what the Lord's saying, open the door, leave it open because the fire is coming and all is gonna be destroyed. And so then the question comes to us, what is the fire and who are the shepherds? Well, the context suggests to us that these shepherds that are spoken of in the first three verses, the howling shepherds, the woeful shepherds, would be the spiritual leaders or those who occupy the office of spiritual leadership in the days of Christ. Because when we come to verses 4 through 14, we're looking at the wounded shepherd who is the Lord Jesus. And we know that because of the prophecy that is given to us there in verses 12 and 13. When we read, I said unto them, if you think good, give me my price. and if not, forbear, they weighed for my price 30 pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, cast into the potter a goodly price that I was prized out of them. And I took the 30 pieces of silver and cast into the potter in the house of the Lord." That is a prophecy of what that happened in the life of Christ. You tell me, what is that prophesying? What happened in the life of Christ that fulfilled that prophecy? You remember? Yeah, Judas sold the Lord for 30 pieces of silver, and then he had remorse. And he went to try to give it back to the priest who wouldn't take it. He threw it at their feet and went out and hanged himself. So clearly, that is prophetic of the Lord Jesus. And that's the context. And we'll look at verses 4 through 14 in just a moment. But so these shepherds that are howling, the woeful shepherds are the spiritual leaders of the Lord's day and they demanded the crucifixion of Christ. They rejected Christ and led Israel to crucify him. And so after that, what happened to the nation of Israel? There was a fire that devoured Israel after they rejected Christ. Do you remember what that was? What was the fire that came? Not a literal fire, but it was a fire of judgment. Yeah, in 70 AD, the Roman armies under Titus came and slaughtered mercilessly and horribly the Jewish people and destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple. That's the fire that's coming. And that's why the shepherds are howling because they were the ones who demanded the death of Christ and now they're paying the price for that, and the people that followed them are also paying the price for rejecting Christ. Following false shepherds always leads to trouble. That was the whole point of chapter 10, but we see it as this shepherd idea continues into chapter 11, we see again the danger of following false shepherds. It always leads to trouble. But secondly, in this chapter, we see the wounded shepherd in verses 4 through 14, where the Lord says to Zechariah, thus saith the Lord, my God, feed the flock of the slaughter. God is telling Zechariah. Now, Zechariah, you play the part of the shepherd. Now, we could say in a sense, because Zechariah is a prophet, that he is, in a sense, shepherding God's people. But the Lord tells us specifically, you feed the flock of the slaughter. He calls them the flock of the slaughter. because they are going to be slaughtered. He's been promising them all this blessing in those visions that he gave through Zechariah in the first part of this book, but I don't want to get ahead of myself here. We're going to get to this tonight, but I want to get ahead of myself, so I want to be careful how I say this, but slaughter's coming, okay? That's why he refers to them as the flock of the slaughter, because it is coming. So Zechariah, but you play the part of the shepherd. Now, Zechariah is a faithful shepherd, as faithful as an under-shepherd can be. And so he is called by God to take the part of the shepherd to this remnant that is rebuilding the temple, or has rebuilt the temple and is now worshiping God. And in that, he is a type of Christ. because what he does and what happens to him is typical and kind of foreshadowing what Christ does and what happens to Christ. And so, you notice in verse five, whose possessors slay them and hold themselves not guilty, those who slaughter them, are going to slaughter them. They're not going to think twice about it. They'll say, even say, blessed be the Lord. I'm rich. Look at the Lord has allowed us to do. And then their own shepherds won't pity them. And the Lord says, I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, sayeth the Lord. I'll deliver every man, deliver the men, everyone into his neighbor's hand and into the hand of his king. And they'll smite the land and out of their land hand I will not deliver them. The judgment, the slaughter is coming. But before that, Zechariah is to take the place of the shepherd, and he is to shepherd. And so in verse 7, Zechariah says, I'll feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock. Now, during Christ's earthly ministry, who mostly followed him? It wasn't the wealthy. There were men like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, later on Barnabas in the book of Acts. There were some wealthy people, well-to-do, ruling class. Nicodemus believed on Christ. But most of the people that followed Christ and that accepted him were just the poor of the land, the common working class people. Matter of fact, when John the Baptist sent a couple of men to, he's in prison, he ends up having his head cut off, but he's kind of maybe wavering in his faith in that moment, as he's in prison awaiting execution, he sends a couple of men to go ask Jesus, are you the one that should come, or are we looking for another? And Jesus then worked some miracles, did some teaching, and then he told those men, go back and tell John what you've seen. And he talked about the blind seeing and the deaf hearing and the poor having the gospel preached unto them. And the reason that he told them to go back and tell John that was because that was what was prophesied that the Lord would do. When Messiah came, he would heal the blind and the lame and the dumb, and he would preach the gospel to the poor. And so even in that, Zechariah is a type of Christ here. And then he says, I took unto me, verse seven, two staves, the one I call beauty, or grace, and the other bands, or unity, and I fed the flock. The shepherd had those two instruments, the rod and the staff. Remember in Psalm 23, that yea, though I walk through the valley, the shadow of death, I will fear no evil with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. The rod was the instrument the shepherd used to protect the flock from the wild animals that would go after them. The staff was what he used to care for the sheep. If the sheep went astray, he would use that staff to bring them back. It was part of his ministry. So Zechariah takes to him the staff, the rod, which he calls beauty, grace, the graciousness of God, and the band or the staff. which speaks of the unity of Israel, the one shepherd, and he says, I fed the flock, I shepherded them. And even, verse 8, three shepherds I cut off in one month. We're not sure exactly what that refers to, but Zechariah's just faithfully carrying out his ministry and even removing people from leadership that would have not been faithful shepherds. And so how did the people then respond to Zachariah's ministry? How did they respond to Jesus' ministry? Well, in verse eight, the latter part of that verse, he says, and my soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me. Did they receive his ministry? No, they abhorred him. And to the point where he, in his humanness, says, you know, if that's the way it is, I don't want any part with you. You won't accept me? I don't want any part of you. And I said, I will not feed you. That that dieth, let it die. That that is to be cut off, let it be cut off. And the rest, eat every one of the flesh of another. There was a point where Jesus, outside the city of Jerusalem, I guess on the road on the Mount of Olives, he looked down on the city and he wept over the city and he said unto them, you know, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, how oft would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers her chicks and you would not. And so now your house is left unto you desolate. You have rejected me. I have rejected you. I'm not going to feed you any longer. That that dieth, let it die. That is to be cut off, let it be cut off. You know, there is a limit to God's patience. God is a long-suffering God, but he will not continue to be long-suffering when we continue to reject. God's a long-suffering God. He gave the Amorites 400 years. of some of the grossest wickedness that could ever be known on the face of the earth. And God was long-suffering with them for 400 years before he finally sent Israel in to the land to destroy them. God is long-suffering. Even after they crucified Christ, it was 40 more years before the Romans came. And the apostles preached the gospel to them yet again. The book of Acts begins with the gospel going to the Jewish nation again. And Paul goes out, and as he's preaching the gospel, and he goes to all these cities, he goes to the Jew first, giving them another chance to accept Christ. And by and large, they rejected him. They are still rejecting him. and they are under his judgment because of that. And so that's what is said in the latter part of chapter eight, verse eight and verse nine. That's what Zechariah is saying to them in his day. You don't wanna hear what I have to say? Fine, I'll just quit. And so he took his staff, even beauty, and cut it asunder that I might break my covenant which I had with all the people. No longer will God's hand of protection be upon you. And he says, it was broken, verse 11, in that day. And so the poor, the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. They realized that, you know, Zechariah is actually, he is faithfully representing God. But the time had come, the rod was broken and the enemy was free to come in. And so then in verse 12, he does say, if you think it good, give me my price. I'm done. If you want to pay me for my service, go ahead and pay me just whatever you think I'm worth. But if you don't wanna pay me, fine. Just pay me whatever you think you're worth. So they weighed for my price 30 pieces of silver. That is the price of a wounded slave, a worthless slave. One, in the law of Moses, if he had been gored by an animal and he's no longer able to really do much work, that's the price. In other words, when they weighed for my price 30 pieces of silver, this is what we think of your ministry. We don't think much of it. You're like a worthless slave to us. We don't appreciate what you're doing. And so the Lord said, cast it to the potter. And notice this statement, a goodly price that I was prized at of them. Was it a good price? 30 pieces of silver, the price of a wounded slave, was that a good price for the ministry that Zechariah had given to them? No. So obviously, that's a sarcastic statement. God is speaking sarcastically, yeah, a good price that you prized me of, yeah. No, a sorry price because they didn't value the shepherding work of Zechariah in his day as the Lord's representative and they didn't appreciate the Lord, the good shepherd who came for them. They rejected him and Judas sold him for 30 pieces of silver. And so then in verse 14, the Lord says, I cut asunder mine other staff, or Zechariah did this, as typical of the Lord, even bans that I may break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. God would have restored Israel, but they rejected him, and so the restoration and the reunion, remember in the days of Rehoboam, Solomon's son, the kingdom was divided. The Lord's gonna reunite Judah and Israel, the 12 tribes will be reunited, but it's not going to happen until Jesus comes again. And so, one day he's gonna reunite them, that day's been delayed due to their rejection of him as their Messiah and that they rejected him and they killed him. Now, let me ask you a question, let's try our memory a little bit. When I had not thought about this since we began this study, I hadn't thought about this, but I was reminded of it as I was reading that and understanding that Zechariah here is a type of Christ in his shepherding ministry. How did Zechariah die? Do you remember? Go back, first of all, go back to Zechariah 1 and verse 1. Zechariah identifies himself. He is Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Ido the prophet. Now, keep your finger there in Zechariah 11, but go to Matthew chapter 23. Matthew 23, the Lord has denounced the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy and for the fact that they would say, we won't be like our fathers who slaughtered the prophets that you sent. But the Lord called them serpents and a generation of vipers And he asks in verse 33 of Matthew 23, how can you escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you'll kill and crucify, and some of them you'll scourge in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city. Notice this, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of the righteous Abel. Who killed Abel? Cain. Unto the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. They didn't appreciate Zechariah's ministry, and they hated him so much that they killed him, right in the very temple, the temple that they had rebuilt, that he had encouraged them in the rebuilding, that God had enabled them to do. And one day they got so fed up with him, so tired of him, they just killed him right there in the temple. And even in his death, Zechariah's like a type of Christ because He faithfully sought to shepherd the people and they rejected his ministry. They didn't value his ministry and ultimately, just a ministry of encouragement. You know, the book began with repent and Malachi comes along some hundred years later and he's preaching against sins of the people. that they had fallen into there, even in Zechariah's day, they didn't appreciate the shepherds that God had given them. They didn't appreciate Zechariah, they killed him. And so because they would not accept the true shepherd, the good shepherd, the Lord as shepherd, then he says in verses 15 through 17, the Lord said unto me, taken ye the instruments of a foolish shepherd, for lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still, but he'll eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces. The Lord said, you won't accept the true Messiah, the true Christ, and so you will then be given an anti-Christ. Jesus said to them in his day, John 5, 43, I am come in my Father's name and you receive me not. If another comes in his own name, him you will receive. And there is coming a day, though they rejected their true Messiah, there's coming a day when another Messiah will come, or one who will call himself their Messiah, their Christ, will come and they will embrace him And he stands in the place of a shepherd, but he is not the good shepherd. He doesn't care for the sheep. He eats the flesh of the sheep and tears their claws in pieces. He devours them. And we know what the Antichrist is going to do to the nation of Israel. He's going to make a covenant with them for seven years. And in the midst of that, he's going to turn against them and slaughter them. And there will be such destruction that the Lord told Israel in Matthew 24. He told them as he was telling the disciples what's going to come. And he said, you know, when you see the abomination of desolation, when the Antichrist sets up his in the temple and demands that men worship him. He said, leave, get out of town, leave, flee. If you're on the housetop, don't even go in the house to get anything. If you're out in the field, don't come back to your house to get anything. Just go, get out of there because then there's gonna be such great tribulation the world has never known and the persecution of the Jewish people in that day will be such that it'll make Hitler's slaughtering of the Jews like nothing. There has never been one that will so massacre and abuse a Jewish people as the Antichrist will. They rejected the true Christ, even the under shepherds that the Lord sent before Jesus came. And so the Lord says, I'll send you a shepherd that you'll accept, but he's not the shepherd you want. And then the Lord will use that because the things change in chapter 12 and 13 and 14. And we see in those chapters that the true comes. It's because the. Antichrist that Israel is then prepared to receive Christ the second time he comes and they will believe on him in that day. But let me just in closing tonight, let me make a couple of points of application and let me ask you to think about this. First of all, how do you respond to the shepherds in your life? Because, you know, it's wonderful and Zechariah certainly would have been in being a faithful shepherd and feeding the flock and reaching out to the poor, Zechariah was trying to be a faithful prophet, a faithful shepherd, he preached an encouraging message, but he also called on them to repent of sin, and they didn't like that part of the message at least, the part that called them to change their ways, and so they killed him. How do you respond to the shepherds in your life? Israel rejected Jesus, they didn't like his message and his method. because they were looking for him to come and establish the kingdom and not be a sacrifice for sin. They were jealous, the scribes and Pharisees were jealous of his ministry and so they killed him. How do you respond to the shepherds in your life? We love the ministry of the shepherd when he's comforting us, when he's encouraging us, we're receptive to that but what about when he's challenging us? I'm thankful today, at least in America, we don't kill our shepherds when we don't like what they have to say. But sometimes we leave the shepherd. I don't like that shepherd. I don't like what he's saying. It cuts cross grain of my life. He's trying to get me to change some things. I'm going to go find another shepherd who'll preach a more pleasant message. Or we don't leave, we just kind of shun the shepherd. And again, let me remind you, it's not just the pastor. What happens when another believer maybe challenges you about something in your life? Or they share something that God has shared with them and it convicts you. They're not necessarily just trying to, it may not be something they don't even know, they're just sharing with you something the Lord gave them and the Lord uses that to convict you and then all of a sudden, how do you respond to them? How do you respond to him using them? How do you respond to The shepherd, the shepherds in your life, when their shepherding ministry isn't comfortable, it's painful. We should be thankful for and receptive to the faithful shepherds who are trying to give us spiritual help even when it hurts. When Nathan confronted David about his sin and said to him, thou art the man, David said to Nathan, off with his head. Now, he didn't say that, he said, you're right, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto him, the Lord also hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die. David, God has forgiven you. But when he's confronted by the shepherd that God had put over his life, you've done wrong. You're right. He humbled himself before the shepherd and before the good shepherd. Uzziah was a godly king. In 2 Chronicles 26, we read, that the Bible says that when he was strong his heart was lifted up to his destruction. He sinned, he was a godly king. Isaiah writes in chapter 6, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, he got the vision of God. But Uzziah was a godly king, one that Isaiah respected and looked up to and the people did. But when things were going well and God had blessed him and given him peace and he's strong, thought that he was better than he was. And so he went into the temple to burn incense. He tried to do something that it wasn't his place to do. Only the priests were allowed to do that. And so the priest, Azariah, takes with him 80 other priests. I like the fact that it says they were valiant men, these priests. Even the priests could be men of war. But he takes his 80 priests with him. They go in to confront the king. And when they confronted Uzziah, he got angry. And immediately the Lord smote him with leprosy and he spent the rest of his days a leper. He rejected the ministry of the shepherd and God dealt with him for it. In Jeremiah 26, the people wanted to kill Jeremiah because he was preaching repent or the Lord will bring judgment. They wanted to kill him. But there were some that stood up for Jeremiah by reminding the people that what had happened in the days of Hezekiah. Another prophet by the name of Micah said to the people, thus saith the Lord of hosts, Zion shall be plowed like a field and Jerusalem will become heaps in the mountain of the house of the high places of the forest. Judgment's coming, Micah said, unless you repent. And they didn't talk about killing Micah. Hezekiah and the people didn't put him to death. Instead, they repented and they were spared the judgment. How do we respond to the prop to the shepherds that God brings into our life, especially when their message is not pleasant, but it's needed? And we have to make a choice. Am I going to humble myself before God who has sent them, who has told them or sent them to deliver that message to me? Am I going to humble myself before God and receive the message and repent and do right? Or am I going to reject the message and reject the messenger in whatever way you want to reject them, disown them, disassociate with them, hopefully not kill them, but I don't want to hear it. But again, you can't reject the ministry of faithful shepherds sent from God with impunity. There's a price to pay if you reject the shepherd because you don't like his message. It will cost you. his message is from God, if he is giving you the word of God and you reject it, you can't do that without paying a price. But let me ask a second question tonight. Are you fulfilling your responsibilities as a shepherd? Again, at the outset, I said it's not just pastors. We all exercise some form of shepherding ministry. And we can love people, but sometimes We have to wound them because it's good for them. Proverbs 27, 5 and 6 says, open rebuke is better than secret love and faithful are the wounds of a friend. But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. A friend would hurt me. Yeah, maybe if it's needed. And you better be thankful if you have friends who are willing to wound you when you need wounding. Rather than just be. Loving to you and let you go on in some wrong way that will ultimately lead you down the path of destruction. David said in Psalm 141 verse five, let the righteous spite me. It'll be a kindness. If someone if a shepherd Wounds me, they're doing me a favor. Let them reprove me, it'll be excellent oil which shall not break my head. It's not gonna kill me, it's gonna help me. And so I'm thankful when somebody rebukes me, when somebody challenges me, when somebody admonishes me if I'm not doing right. In Revelation 3 and verse 19, the Lord says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent. But if people are going to be helped, sometimes they have to be hurt in order to help them. But our tendency is to want to shy away from hurting people. And we don't want to do it with a callous heart. We want to do it with a compassionate heart. But if somebody that God has put in our orbit needs wounding, then we must not shy away from it just because it will hurt. And it might hurt us because they might reject us. Zechariah, it cost him his life. Paul paid with his life. The apostles paid with their life for simply preaching truth to people that needed to hear it. But they rejected it and slaughtered the shepherds. They may hate you. They may reject you. They may curse you. They may mock you. But if that's what God has called you to do, be a faithful shepherd. So how do you respond to the shepherds that God brings into your life, especially if they have to speak words that are hard to hear? And how faithfully do you carry out your shepherding responsibilities? When doing so means you've got to hurt somebody, but it's you're hurting them for their good. Speaking the truth. In love, as Paul wrote to the Ephesian church, we must speak sometimes the truth that hurts. We do it out of a heart of love because we care about people and we want to see them blessed of God. And knowing that the direction they're heading or the things that they're doing won't bring that blessing. So three shepherds. But what about our shepherding ministry? Let's stand together for prayer. Our father, we thank you tonight. For those shepherds that you have brought into our life through the years that were faithful. That faithfully proclaimed your truth, and even sometimes when it must have been difficult for them and it was hard for us. We confess, Lord, there's been times when we rejected. That truth. And we have paid a price. And we hopefully have learned from that. And we're more receptive to even the hard truth that we need to hear from time to time. Lord, help us not only to receive the work of the shepherds you brought into our life, but to be faithful to shepherd others that you put under our care. And so may we take this truth that we've considered tonight. May we seek to live it in our lives for your glory. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.