Transcription of the Video: Ears to Hear

The Bible says, "He brought his people out like a flock. He led them like sheep in the desert." He led them in the desert. Deserts are beautiful, but they're hard, they're harsh, they're difficult. Why would God lead his people into the desert? 

You might think, "Well, maybe it was punishment." But they hadn't rebelled yet. They hadn't complained. They hadn't resisted. He was going to lead them into the desert right from the very beginning. Why would God want his people in difficult and painful circumstances?

God wants to mold and shape a people into the kind of people he needs, the kind of people that will be his witnesses to the world. And somehow, in difficult circumstances, people find a closer relationship with God. In the desert, you learn you need him. There's nowhere else to turn. He's going to have to provide if we're going to survive. In the desert, what we receive is manna from Heaven or water from the rock. It's clearly a gift from him. We can't do it ourselves. And in that trust and dependence, God molds his people. He always has. And he does today as well. 

But there's something else God wanted to mold and shape in his people besides just dependence and an awareness that life comes from him. God wanted to mold a people who followed him. You see, Egypt is a culture for the eyes. Everything the Egyptians created is amazing to the eyes. It's big. It's beautiful. It's amazing. But often, it misled them. It detracted them from what God wanted his people to be. God wanted a people not first of all of the eyes. God wanted a people of the ears. He had an idea. He had a plan to do something more massive than the pyramids that would last longer than the temples in Karnak, that would be more powerful than Pharaoh ever was. God wanted to reveal himself the Creator of the universe in words. And those words would shape and mold a people and a culture and eventually bring redemption to a broken world. 

So God wanted people who would hear those words, and like sheep, would follow the voice of the shepherd. So he led them to where they would learn to listen and to hear. He led them to the place where the shepherd is and he led them like a flock, like sheep in the desert. Let's go see. Come.

This is the land the Bible calls wilderness - midbar. Interesting language, Hebrew. It comes from a root word dabar. Midbar, wilderness; dabar which means word or commandment. Dibber, to speak, comes from the same root. So what do wilderness and speak and word have to do with each other? Well, the rabbis taught that it was in the wilderness that shepherds lead their flock by word. So naturally midbar (wilderness) is the place of dabar (word) or dibber (speak). In fact, one of the words for shepherd is madbir - same root. Dober means pasture from that same root dabar. And d'vir is the inner sanctuary or the sheepfold where the sheep are kept safe. So one could say the shepherd, (madbir) leads the flock into the wilderness (midbar) by speaking (dibber) words (dabar) and leading the sheep to dober (pasture) or in times of danger d'vir (an inner sheepfold). 

In other words, wilderness and shepherd have much to do with each other. This is where the shepherd comes, leading the flock by word. So God brought his people to the wilderness or brings his people to the desert in order to shape them and mold them into a flock that will follow his word. 

I'm walking here in this wilderness on a narrow trail. You can barely make it out. There's another up there and another higher, another down below. These are grazing trails. They've been worn here over a millennia by shepherds slowly leading their flocks to these hillsides for grazing. They're called straight paths in the Bible or sometimes paths of righteousness. Jewish tradition teaches that the sheep would get on such a path, head down, slowly grazing along, the shepherd out in front speaking the words, leading the flock. And the sheep know as long as it stayed on this path, the righteous path or the straight path, couldn't go wrong, would always lead to the shepherd. 

So it is for God's flock today. God speaks and if we get on the path that God has planned for us, get on the path that God has commanded, as long as we take that path and follow the shepherd's voice, we know we can't go wrong. We'll always come to the shepherd. 

But you know, it's hard to believe that this is grazing land for sheep. We've prayed often that God would provide a flock during the production of this study. Days passed and no flock, and then weeks. And then, suddenly, unexpectedly, there it was, exactly what we prayed for. Come. Let's go see.

It's been quite an experience, us going out here in the wilderness to see these sheep and goats, this flock here in the Negev wilderness in the southern part of Israel not far from where Abraham pastured his flocks. And we just happened to be passing by and saw that flock, so we've come out into the field to see them.

Notice how they've been leading those sheep by voice. You can hear them singing. There are two shepherd girls. They're both on top of the hill. One's on a donkey. One's just standing there, and you can hear the voice every once in a while. Let's just be quiet a moment and see if we can pick that up.

Isn't that amazing to listen to them talk to the sheep? Do not live by bread alone but by every word, and every word is designed to guide that flock, to care for the flock, to let the flock know where she is and that she's there. It's just so compelling how simple it is and yet how difficult it is, how difficult it was for the Hebrews and how hard it is for us to learn to listen and to respond to the Word. It's really a stunning piece here this afternoon. 

As part of a shepherd lesson, I did want to look at one thing in the wilderness that will maybe surprise you a bit. Believe it or not, this is called wilderness (midbar), but it's also called green pastures. Now, when you take a westerner here the first time and you look at this, you find people say, "Well, I don't know that I can go there. Because the Psalm 23, "The Lord leads me into green pastures," has been pictured as belly-deep alfalfa. Well, you haven't seen belly-deep alfalfa. And from biblical time to today, it's rare to see a flock in the farm country. There isn't a lot of farm country in this culture, and so farmers kept the shepherds out as much as they could. Maybe they would come in a little bit after the harvest to glean what was left, but you don't want sheep where you can farm. This is the land of the shepherd.

And David is with the sheep in the wilderness, and in the book of Numbers, we read-- God says, "I'm going to put you in the wilderness for 40 years with your flocks." So this is where shepherds go, and this season of the year-- it's springtime now-- this is the season of the year that the pastures turn green. So let me show you a couple of things.

Right in the hillside across from us, you can see those grazing trails, cut there by sheep maybe as long ago as Abraham's time. They're spaced so that an animal on one path and an animal on another can reach right to the middle between them. That determines the distance so you can graze an entire hillside. And the shepherds lead their sheep across that hillside slowly, grazing what's there. Now you look at it from here and you say, "What's there?" In fact, I remember my first impression. I woke up one morning. I was sleeping out in the wilderness and I remember waking up watching a flock of sheep on a hillside like this, and my feeling was, "What are those? Rock-eating sheep? I mean, what do they eat? How can you call this green pastures?"

Well, the answer is, there's a small amount of moisture present here. They get a little bit of rain every year. Not much, but a little. Second, there is humidity in the air, especially in the evening breeze. Like right now, you can feel it coming from the west off the Mediterranean. There's moisture in the air. That moisture combination of the rain and the humidity condenses or drips along the edge of these rocks here. And if you notice, right around the rocks, almost always next to the rocks, you get little tufts of green. Get one a moment. That's what we refer to as the green pastures. 

So the shepherd looks for a hillside. That's exactly what she was doing. Look at that flock across from us there. It's just stunning. Those two shepherd girls have found a hillside that either was exposed to the wind or had that small amount of rain. And they move that flock across the hillside and it's one mouthful here, walk a step or two, another mouthful, another mouthful, another mouthful.

Now that changes the green pasture image a little bit besides the picture changing radically. Green pastures are not everything you need for the rest of your life. If you make that belly-deep alfalfa, then what God is saying, "If you follow me, I'm going to plunk you down and you'll never have to move an inch the rest of your life. Just reach out and grab it." Tell me that your life with God has been like that.

The green pastures idea is God saying, "Look. Do you have enough right now? And the sheep, the goat says, "Yeah. I've got a mouthful." Two minutes from now, the shepherd is there. There will be another tuft, another rock, another grazing trail. And there will be enough. Twenty minutes from now, I've got a shepherd. But what if you lose contact with the shepherd? Then you could be in trouble. You could end up on a hillside somewhere. That one over there looks, to me, like there's not a whole lot of those green pastures growing there right now. You could be in trouble. So make sure you stay with the shepherd.

The idea, in other words, in Psalm 23, "The Lord leads me into green pastures," is that it's not a one-time thing. It's right now, 10 minutes from now, 10 minutes from now. 

I remember talking about this with an Israeli friend when I first was learning about it, and he said to me, "You westerners look at it so differently." He said to me, "Do you have what it takes to handle what's going to happen to you 10 minutes from now?"

My first thought was he knew something I didn't know. And then, I started thinking, "My wife and kids were back in the states and no, I'm not sure I could, depending on what I heard."

He said, "Do you have enough for right now?" 

I said, "Yeah." 

He said, "Why isn't that goat worried?"

I said, "Because he's got what he needs."

He said, "Then you understand Psalm 23."

"Worry," said one rabbi, "is dealing with tomorrow's problems on today's pasture." In the desert, you learn the shepherd will get you what you need for right now. Ten minutes from now, you trust the shepherd. It's interesting that God didn't put that in the desert with the Hebrews into a shepherd metaphor. That comes in Psalm 23 with David. He put it into a manna metaphor. But it's exactly the same idea. You get enough manna for today. Tomorrow - there will be manna tomorrow too. But you trust him for that manna. 

So believe it or not, in the biblical story, this is much more green pastures than the western picture of belly-deep alfalfa. And God is saying to us in the desert, "Trust me. You all have what you need right now. You may be struggling, but you have what you need. And if you follow me, you get around that corner, there will be more of the same."

So in another metaphor, God says, "Trust me. Trust me totally. I'll bring you to the green pastures. Just enough."

Do you ever wish it was more than that? Those deserts God leads us into can be very hard. But God wants us to learn that just enough is all we need to trust him completely by every word that comes from his mouth. 

Jesus came to fulfill that idea in a profound way. He was the Word incarnate. He came and walked in deserts with us literally here in the land of the Bible, but figuratively too, he knew pain. He knew struggle. He knew hardship. He was both sheep and shepherd. That makes him a wonderful shepherd, because he understands the deserts his sheep, his flock find themselves in. He said, "I am the Good Shepherd. My sheep will not follow a stranger. They hear my voice. They know my voice. They follow me." 

And so he came to lead us in our deserts to our green pastures. But he leads by word. I don't know about you, but I've found in the deserts that I've been in, in my life somehow, it becomes easier to listen. The noise, the busy-ness of everyday sometimes crowds out God's speaking. But when there's pain and struggle and hardship, God calls on us to stop, to listen, to hear the voice of the shepherd in that desert and then to know how to follow. We always have the hope that that voice will lead us out of desert, but it took the Hebrews 40 years. So we may be in desert for a while. 

But we need to listen. Can you hear his voice in your desert? Do you hear him call, lead, show you to just enough, to go another day or another week? Somehow, I think it's easier to listen in the desert, and maybe that's why God brings his flock here so that as they listen, they learn to follow every word that comes from the mouth of God. And in following, they find green pastures, always just enough.