The Christian Culture often has an Identity Crisis

 Jeremiah 23:1-8

Do you have pity parties?  I’m not big into them and yet it seems many in our Christian culture embellish them.  It makes one wonder if they have an identity crisis, for in the Scripture we find in 1 Peter 2:9-10, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”  Nowhere did it say you would feel like a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, but feelings are not the measuring tape, God’s Word is. 

If you do have an identity problem, listen to Jesus talking to His Father in John 17:20-24. “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”  This question must come to your mind, and it has little to do with how well you perform at some religious place of worship.  The question; “Have I entered into a personal relationship with Jesus by faith in the finished work of the Cross? 

Chapter 23:1-8 has the title “The Righteous Branch, ” and it was referring to Judah and Israel then and now, and you and I as a wild branch have been grafted into that Righteous branch.  But Chapter 23 is not dealing with the Church but with the people of Judah.  The kings and all leaders of Judah and that include both civil and spiritual leaders that have not been diligent in caring for God’s chosen people.  God is very clear they are His sheep, His flock, and those who were to shepherd them and had dropped the ball were in big trouble in that they had allowed the flock to be scattered, and it is evident they will be punished for these evil acts.

Now listen to the good news in verses 3-4, “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord.”   

Some of these shepherds have names and have been written about like Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, but others have not come on the stage at this time.

Now in verses five through eight there is a new Shepherd, and His name is Jesus, the one they had rejected, now that is grace.  Jesus is the Branch of David, He is the Messiah, and they will ask the question, where did you get those scars on your hands and feet?  When Jesus returns, it will not be to free His chosen people from Egypt but from all parts of the earth where they were driven.  Now that is a day this writer is looking forward to!

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice