Messy Leadership

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We have sky-high expectations and down-low realities all occurring at the same time. It is the darkest time of the year that we celebrated the brightest event of all time. And it's the most wonderful time of the year, we say, but it is also some of the hardest times of the year for some people because of all the expectations and all from grief loss occurrences to different events throughout life just bring this whole swirl of things, a conglomeration of contradictions into our lives. And, you know, sometimes we can say we just need to simplify, we need to clarify, we need to make it whatever. I don't think we need to clean up Christmas at all. I think it's that kind of a world that Jesus came into. A messy Christmas is exactly what the first one was. So today we're going to be looking at another passage that's really messy. It's from the prophet Ezekiel chapter 34. It's probably the longest extended metaphor used in the shepherd and sheep analogy in the Bible. You might not even know about it that much, but it's really about the messy leadership that Israel was having at the time and how God said he's going to intervene and do something. We're going to be in Ezekiel chapter 34. We're going to read just the six verses, but then throughout the message we're going to refer to other sections of this chapter. It would be worth your read this week to just read through it and really meditate on what God is all saying through the prophet Ezekiel in this chapter. So let's read it. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds, thus saith the Lord God. Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves. Do you get what's going on here? He's really not talking about real shepherds and sheep. It's an analogy for the leadership and the people. It's a whole chapter like this. Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat. You clothe yourselves with the wool. You slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. You the weak. You have not strengthened the sick. You have not healed the injured. You have not bound up the straight. You have not brought back the loss. You have not sought. And with force and harshness, you have ruled them. So they are scattered. We're scattered because there is no shepherd and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered. They wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth with none to search or seek for them. All right. We're going to do it after this sermon, okay? Sorry. I just got going right away. By the way, David Grigg, he'll be coming up. He's been part of our worship team. Sarah and David have been around for a while here at Thrive. And some of you know I have taken on a full-time position at FGCU starting this week. It was Monday. It was my first day. And it's to be the coordinator for all adjunct faculty. There's about 360 or so. But there is flexibility in the job. I am still the preacher, pastor, okay? It's all going to happen. Don't worry. This week was not bad. I got my message done on Wednesday. So for a pastor, that's amazingly quick, okay? Do you understand? Yeah, yeah. Many pastors, it's Saturday night. Some, it's even Sunday morning, okay? But David is going to be, this allows us in our budget to now bring on someone who's much younger than me. I know you can't imagine anybody being younger than me. But somebody who can handle the schedule of college students and really be able to understand and relate to them a little better than I. I'm an old fart now, man. I'll just tell you. And so I will be, he will be handling campus ministry. He'll be doing other pastoral duties under my supervision. We're going to be a great team, I think, together along with you all. And I'm just excited about that. So we're going to pray for him at the end and let him say a couple words, okay? But, and I think this is appropriate today, by the way, Dave, because it's about leadership. And you're going to be in a position of leadership, right? So we don't want to be like these leaders, okay? We don't want to be like most leaders, sadly. And we're going to be talking about that today. The Bible, by the way, uses about the metaphor of sheep for people, y'all, me, okay? We're sheep in the Bible about 400 times. It's one of the main metaphors for who God's people are and what we are like. Now don't go all soft focus and think pastoral themes of fluffy little sheep. We do this all the time even at when children put on Christmas plays. We get the kids to play parts of donkeys and sheep and all that stuff. And they're the cutest little things, right? Sheep are not cute. The analogy of sheep for human beings is a little of an insult, okay? I'll just tell you that. But I think it'...