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CLIP - God's people are like dumb sheep

Jim Butler · 2023-10-05 · 185 words · 1 min

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Summary

Expository

Scripture is profitable for reproof and correction precisely because God's people, like sheep, are persistently prone to wander from the God they love.

Scripture reproves and corrects because God's people are prone to wander — not despite their intelligence, but because, like sheep, they lack it. Drawing on 2 Timothy 3:16, this clip illustrates the doctrine of Scripture's profitability by showing that reproof and correction are not punitive ends but the means by which God retrieves his wandering people. The image of a sheep rescued from a trench only to dive back in captures the stubbornness of indwelling sin and the patience of the Good Shepherd.

Key quotes

It's profitable for doctrine, it provides the raw data, it provides to us the teaching that we need, and we receive that teaching and it reproves us because we are prone to wander and we are prone to leave the God that we love.
There's this trench, and the shepherd fetched a sheep out of the trench, and once he let it go, the sheep ran and dove right back into the trench. What a great caricature of the people of God.
All we like sheep have gone astray. Why does God use that convention?

Applications

  1. Receive the reproof of Scripture as a mercy, not a punishment — God does not leave you merely condemned but corrects you.
  2. Recognise your own tendency to return to the very sins Scripture has warned you against, and rely on the word of God to retrieve you.

Questions this sermon answers

Why does God compare his people to sheep?

Not because sheep are intelligent, but because they are prone to wander — rescued from danger, they run straight back into it, which is an accurate picture of how believers relate to sin and the corrective word of Scripture.

What does it mean that Scripture is profitable for reproof and correction?

Scripture provides the raw doctrinal data believers need, and that teaching reproves them when they stray and corrects them by directing them back to God.

It's for good cause. But notice he doesn't just leave you reproved, he also corrects you. See, notice what Paul is saying here. It's profitable for doctrine, it provides the raw data, it provides to us the teaching that we need, and we receive that teaching and it reproves us because we are prone to wander and we are prone to leave the God that we love.

Rebecca and Pastor Naftali and I were talking recently about the nature of sheep. You know, it's not an accident that God likens the people of God to sheep, and he doesn't do that because we're the most intelligent beings. There's a little, I don't know what it is, you see a little clip of a video on the computer, and I saw one recently where there was this trench, and the shepherd fetched a sheep out of the trench, and once he let it go, the sheep ran and dove right back into the trench. What a great caricature of the people of God.

All we like sheep have gone astray. Why does God use that convention?

Scripture References

Study notes

Theological terms

  • Correction×2
  • Reproof×2
  • Sufficiency of Scripture