King David may have had no idea how many people would take comfort from the words of a song he wrote, the song we now call Psalm 23, but the words of that song were written for you, weren’t they!  When sin and guilt were not just words you heard at church but things so real that they were practically dripping off your head and hands, the Lord led you to the green pastures and still waters of the gospel and restored your soul.  When it didn’t seem like you were walking through the valley of the shadow of death, when it seemed instead that you were broken down and stuck there and fears and tears had become a way of life, even there the Lord was with you calming fears and drying tears.  When it took a disaster or a disease to show you how many people really cared and that your cup was actually running over even when you may have felt like you were running on empty, that was the Lord being your shepherd.

Together with that favorite psalm there is a fitting blessing for this Sunday in the church year.  We’ll use it when the service closes.  We don’t know who wrote the letter to the Hebrews but, just like Psalm 23, the blessing in the last chapter of Hebrews was certainly written for you!  It’s

 A Benediction for Good Shepherd Sunday

…one which tells you that 1) the God who loves you 2) is the God who will help you.

If you want to get really frustrated about something, try to figure out how God can be eternal.  He never had a beginning.  Your radiator will overheat on that one.  So what if the eternal God had made an eternal covenant – where can we go with that?  There’s a covenant or contract which (like God) has been around forever. It’s an eternal covenant, so God must have made this agreement with himself because he was the only one around in eternity.  And what made this agreement binding was the shedding of blood.  The blood on Jesus’ brow and on the ground beneath his cross was the blood of an eternal covenant.  From eternity God made a contract with himself to wash away sin through the death of his Son. 

Something you’ll want to note today is, “Where is that blood now?”  God’s eternal agreement was to wash you clean in the blood of his Son.  Once the Good Shepherd laid down his life for the sheep, God the Father brought that great shepherd of the sheep back from the dead.  His holy blood did not return to dust.  It’s the blood of the eternal covenant.  It is coursing through the veins of the living Jesus.  It is present in the sacrament.  It intercedes for you at God’s right hand in the person of Jesus Christ.  What kind of blessing is it for you to hear that!

There is something bigger about your sin and my sin than the way it messes up our lives.  The uncaring or downright mean thing you said to someone– yes, that will tend to put you at odds with that person. Conflicts between parents and children or husbands and wives – they quickly become a mess.   Covering your tracks to make sure no one finds out what you did, but then they find out – even bigger mess.  But the one thing that is bigger trouble than all of that is what all of that says to God.  Sin may well mess up your life but it stirs up God’s anger.  Do you have a fix for that?  No, you don’t.

The God who made the eternal agreement with himself before he created people – he has the fix for that.  Before you were born, before you were tempted to sin, before you fell into sin, before you tried to cover it up and before it messed everything up the Lord had it covered.  God forgiving and forgetting your sin was pre-arranged in eternity.  God forgiving and forgetting your sin was provided for on the cross when the sinless shepherd shed his holy blood and died in place of the sinful sheep.  God forgiving and forgetting your sin is proven to be true forever in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

“I will praise you, O Lord.  Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.”  The blessing that will be spoken again at the close of the service does not begin with, “May the God of anger,” or “May the God who demands payment,” or “May the God who says you’d better shape up…”   It begins, “May the God of peace…”   The great shepherd of the sheep is alive from the grave and you are at peace with God.

The God who loves you is the God who will help you.

What is it you need help with right now?  Whatever it is, it is covered in this benediction for Good Shepherd Sunday.  It is God’s will that you not lose yourself in endless worry about how it will happen that you’ll make ends meet.  It is his will that you trust him, because if he takes care of birds, he will take care of you.  So the great Shepherd of the sheep gives you confidence in his promises, employment and an income, not everything you want but all that you need.  The God who loves you is the God who will help you, equipping you with everything good for doing his will.

You recognize without a doubt that you need to leave sinful behavior behind.  How’s it going to happen?  That happens not by your good intentions or your firm resolve – that happens as Jesus makes it happen.  He was brought back to life to keep serving as your shepherd.  He feeds you with the word of his forgiveness and then you drink in his promises.  He empowers you to leave sinful behavior behind as he tells you, “I will strengthen you.  I will help you.  I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”  The God who loves you is the God who will help you, working in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ.

There’s a mammoth desert wasteland of grief lying before you and you can’t see a way across it and it hurts, a mountain of health and medical issues that won’t go away and still the best doctors haven’t figured it out, relationships that are on the rocks, prices that are on the rise, things that have troubled you for twenty years and problems that just popped up yesterday, but there’s a blessing that covers it all.  The God who loves you is the God who will help you, equipping you with everything good for doing his will and working in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ.  It’s all addressed by Jesus Christ, the great shepherd who knows his sheep by name, who knows you by name, who has not let your case fall through the cracks, who helps you do what God wants done.

Glory be to him forever and be looking for this benediction at the close of the service.  It will do you a world of good.