How to Shepherd God's People

Verse: 

"You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.  The weak you have not strengthened, the sick  you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them."

Ezekiel 34:3-4

Thoughts: 

Today, I have continued my look at Ezekiel.  However, where I started by not really knowing what to do and just jumping into the text, I have now started looking forward to continuing through Ezekiel and just seeing what God shows me. Yesterday's reading of Ezekiel 33 just brought me to that sense of awe when God revealed His word and that has continued today with chapter 34.  Hopefully this will continue as I'm excited to see what he shows me.

Ezekiel 34 seemed to be an alliteration that could go many different ways.  It seems to have a lot of foreshadowing of Christ where the shepherds at the time were not keeping the flocks (Israel) as they should.  Consequently, God will dispose of them and take control of the shepherding duties himself.  

You can also read into it a more modern (post-messianic) spin where it can serve as a warning to us Christians who are not going out and performing our duties among God's flock.  Once Christ blessed us with his blood, we can either horde that blessing to ourselves and do nothing with it or we can go and share it with others.  Ezekiel 34 clearly shows that God would prefer that we help others (see v. 4).  

The last thing I saw which stirred my curiosity was verses 11-16.  I am not 100% sure where I stand on the topic of elect vs non-elect and predestination vs. free-will.  These verses would seem to lean more towards the argument that an elect and non-elect exist...a.k.a. God is the primary determinant in who will be saved - not the individual person.  For example, verse 15-16 says "I [God] myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy.  I will feed them in justice."  In these verses, it clearly seems to say that God himself will seek the lost and bring them back into the fold.  This would seem to me to suggest that he chooses those who are to be saved.  I'm still not sure where I stand on it, but I'll chalk this verse up to one for the elect / non-elect argument.

For practical notes, the one last piece I pulled out of chapter 34 are verses 3-4 which I quoted at the top of this post.  Those two verse seem like a good set of instructions as to what we are supposed to do as Christians as we interact with others.  I will have to study the New Testament some more, but I'm pretty sure the actions described up there will be similar to those Jesus and his disciples spoke of when interacting with people.