THE GOOD SHEPHERD - John 10:1-18
In this series on the sayings of Jesus recorded in John's Gospel that begin "I AM," we come to two that naturally pair up: "I am the good shepherd" (10:14), and "I am the door" (10:9).
THE SHEPHERD IN THE BIBLE
The picture of the shepherd is deeply woven into the language and imagery of the Bible, and there is a reason for it that it will be worth our while to see.
I remember on my first visit to Israel being surprised by the terrain. So much of it is hilly, rough and stony. Only the coastal plain (called the Plain of Sharon in the north), the inland plain of Megiddo (since it has been drained), the Jordan Valley and the stretch north from Galilee to ancient Dan are suitable for agriculture. The central chain of hills stretching south from Galilee allows agriculture, for the most part, only in narrow terraced strips on the hillsides. In particular the plateau running from Bethel just north of Jerusalem through Bethlehem to Hebron, south of it - the main part of Judæa - is gashed with rifts which make agriculture very difficult indeed. Olives and vines and fig trees are grown on hillsides here and there; otherwise it is land for sheep and goats. Throughout the Bible period therefore, the shepherd was a familiar figure of the Judæan uplands.
The life of a Palestinian shepherd was very hard; indeed, it is so still. There is little grass, and its growth - where it does appear - is seasonal. Flocks must be for ever on the move to find it, and the edges of the plateau - only 35 miles long and 17 miles wide - dip away sharply into craggy desert land below. No flock may ever graze without a shepherd to watch it. The shepherd therefore was never off duty. His task was unremitting and dangerous: his sheep were prey to wolves, bears and lions in Bible times, to thieves and robbers, and in the wet season to flash floods and land slides.
Sir George Adam Smith wrote: "When you meet him, in some high place at night, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, leaning on his staff and looking out over his scattered sheep, wolf howls drifting on the wind in every direction, you understand why the shepherd of Judæa sprang to the fore in his peoples' history; why he gave his name to their kings; why they made him the symbol of providence; and why Christ took him as the type of self-sacrifice."
Vigilant, fearless, patient, caring - that was the shepherd of Bible times. He lived, not for himself but for his flock.
God is often pictured in the Old Testament as a shepherd:"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." (Psalm 23:1)"Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a flock." (Psalm 80:1)"He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand." (Psalm 95:7)"He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young." (Isaiah 40.11)"Thus saith the Lord God: I, I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them to lie down. I will seek the lost ... and bring back the strayed ... and bind up the crippled and strengthen the weak; the fat and the strong I will watch over." (Ezekiel 34.15)
This picture carries over into the New Testament.
Jesus is the Good shepherd. John 10:11He is the shepherd who will risk his life to seek and to save the one sheep that has strayed. Matthew 8:12He has pity on the crowds because they are as sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36His disciples are His little flock. (Luke 12:32)When He, the shepherd, is smitten the sheep are scattered. (Mark 14:27)He is "the great shepherd of the sheep." (Hebrews 13:20)
We may easily miss the arresting significance of this. Familiarity with the image makes us forget that in applying it to Jesus of Nazareth the New Testament writers were ascribing divinity to Him. That He applied the language to Himself in a culture where the picture of the shepherd was an archetypal image of God was on His part, not a veiled, but an explicit claim to godhood.
THE SHEPHERD OF BIBLE TIMES
Let me take you now a step further to help us to understand a shepherd's life, for the Bible shepherd's task was not at all like an Australian stockman's.
i. His equipment first
It consisted of ...A scripA bag made of animal skin in which he carried his food ... bread, dried fruit, olives and cheese.
A slingHe was highly skilled with it. He could "sling a stone at a hair's breadth and not miss." It was a weapon with which to slay beasts; David slew Goliath with it.There is another use to which he put it which is of interest too. Since he went ahead of his sheep, he would recall a sheep that had dropped behind by lobbing a stone just where it would make him jump the right way back.
A staffA wooden club, quite short, its knobbly end often studded with nails, which he slung from his belt. It was his weapon for close-in fighting with beast or brigand, as the sling was his long range weapon.
A rodThe familiar shepherd's crook. With the curled end he could hook a sheep by its hind leg and haul it in to him. At the end of the day he held it low to the ground as the sheep entered the fold, obliging each sheep to "pass under the rod," when he would examine it for any injury it might have sustained through the day; then, with the last item of equipment ...
A hornA scooped-out, stoppered animal horn that hung inverted from his belt, filled with oil, he would apply healing to the wound.Do you "pass under the shepherd's rod" at the end of your day?
ii. The relationship between the shepherd and his sheepSecond, we should understand the relationship between the shepherd and his sheep.
Except for those around Bethlehem which were bred for the Temple sacrifices, sheep were not, for the most part, bred for killing, but for shearing. The shepherd and his sheep often shared life together therefore for years. A hundred sheep was about as large a flock as one man could manage, and the intimacy that grew between them was intense. He named them all. He developed a language in which he communicated with them. H. V. Morton once described it: "He talks to them in a sing-song voice, using a language unlike anything I have heard in my life. The words were animal sounds arranged in a kind of order ... a language the great god Pan might have spoken on the mountains of Greece."
I remember a minister in England recalling once that he visited churches in Germany with his son and daughter on a holiday there. They had lingered in one of them, and he re-entered the church to fetch them out, just in time to hear his son say to his sister, crouched in front of the communion table where they had been translating the words carved on it, "You know, when God comes here, He talks German." He speaks to us in our own tongue.
"My sheep hear my voice."
THE DOOR
At the end of the day shepherds would bring their flocks to a shared fold, an area boundaried by a stone wall. The door of the sheepfold was a mere gap in one wall, no wider than a sheep, which the shepherd (or the gatekeeper) filled by standing, or lying down in it himself. A sheep might leave the fold, or a wolf or thief enter it, only over the body of the shepherd. He was himself the door. In the morning, when the sheep were led out to pasture, the shepherds would stand some way off ranged in an arc around the "door" and begin calling their sheep by name. They would trot out one by one and gather round "their shepherd."
vs. 3-5: "The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers."
Do you listen for the shepherd's calling voice each morning? And whose voice do you hear through the day? Do we heed the voices of strangers with our inner ear?
The saying that a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep was not an exaggeration in those times. It was the most natural thing to defend the flock with his life. Dr. W. M. Thompson, in "the Land and the Book", writes: "I have listened with intense interest to graphic descriptions of downright and desperate fights with savage beasts. And when the thief and the robber come (and come they do), the faithful shepherd has often to put his life in his hand to defend his flock. A poor faithful fellow last spring, between Tiberias and Tabor, instead of fleeing, actually fought three Bedouin robbers until he was hacked to pieces with their khanjars, and died among the sheep he was defending."
THE GOOD SHEPHERD
Now let me walk you briefly through just some of the points where we may apply all this to the relationship we have with our Shepherd.
vs. 1 - 2 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber; but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens ..."
Jesus here claims to be the only one who can give you a place in His flock, among the People of God. "No man comes to the Father but by me." You are a stranger to God until you have a personal relationship of trust and intimacy with the Lord Jesus.
Do you have that? He offers it to you as His gift. There is no way we may receive it but as a gift. We can do nothing of ourselves to secure or fashion it. It is given to us, or we do not have it.
Wrote John, "This is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life. I write this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." (I John 5:12-14) You have but to receive it, with simple trust.
Jesus reinforces what He says here in vs. 7-10: Jesus again said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not heed them. I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture."
When He says, "All who came before me are thieves and robbers," He is not writing off all the priests and prophets of Israel as imposters; they indeed, as we read in Hebrews 11, "all died in faith, having seen what was promised, and greeted it, from afar ..." They had "heard His voice." Rather He is saying that He is the one mediator between God and man; anyone else who claims to be is an imposter. He is your only real introduction to God. God gives His Son into the world, and says to us, "I will meet with you in Him - no other."
To go to Him is to go to God.To receive Him is to receive God.To know Him is to know God.To enjoy Him is to enjoy God.
No Eastern religion can give you that. No religion at all can give you that, not even Christianity itself if it is conceived as a system, an ethic, apart from Christ Himself. No method of meditation can give you that. No quest for truth in "inner space" can give you that. Only Jesus can give you that. He is calling to you ... waiting for you to hear His voice, and go to Him.
"I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture."
v. 10b "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."
The phrase "have it abundantly" is a Greek phrase which means "to have a surplus," to be rich. We are not truly alive until we have come alive to Him.
In the Greek the "I" is emphatic - "I came so they might have life."
Christ's interest in you is not a commercial interest; it is not a salesman's or an advertiser's interest. They offer to enrich your life, but their real interest is the enrichment of their own. Christ has no interest in His own enrichment. So true is this that "He lays down His life for the sheep." He is the only one who holds your interests so truly to heart that He may be trusted absolutely to seek no selfish gain from you. His one endeavour is to give ... to lead you to "green pastures" and "still waters" and a "prepared table" and an "overflowing cup." The life He gives is the life God created you to enjoy. There is nothing niggardly in His bestowal of it. He will give you "good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over."
v. 11 " I am the Good Shepherd."
The word for "good" in the phrase "good shepherd" is not the usual word for "good" in the New Testament. The usual word is "agathos" which describes moral quality; here the word is "kalos" and that is a word that means not merely that a person is good, but in his goodness beautiful. It denotes a quality of winsomeness, of loveliness, of beauty. "I am the shepherd beautiful." There is more than faithfulness in Him; there is more than virtue in Him; there is more than truth in Him; there is beauty in Him.
"Sometimes," observes William Barclay, "in a village or town people speak of 'the good doctor.' When they speak of him that way they are not thinking only of his efficiency and skill as a medical practitioner; they are thinking of the sympathy and kindness, the genuine, heart-warming care he has for his patients which makes him, not just their doctor but their friend."
The Lord Jesus is 'the good shepherd,' the "altogether lovely one, the fairest of ten thousand." Who else inspires songs like ...
Jesus, tender lover of my soul,Pardoner of my sins and friend indeed,Keeper of the garden of my soul,All my lasting joys are found in Thee;Jesus Thou art everything to me.
More to me than all the joys of earth,What to me is every sight I seeSave the sight of Thee, O Friend of mine?
Here I lay me at Thy bleeding feet,Deepest homage now I give to Thee;Hear Thy whispered love within my soul;Jesus Thou art everything to me.
He inspires, not just admiration, not just homage, nor even praise merely, but love - true, tender, glad, unbridled love. He generates the intimacy He describes in v. 14: listen, for the words are astonishing: "I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father."
And if you wonder whether He indeed intends this to be your enjoyment, then hear what He goes on at once to say, "And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd." vs. 17-18vs 17-18 Finally note the astonishing claim in verses 17 & 18: "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father. "It is the only thing in the entire record Jesus ever said He did of His own accord. The laying down of His life was His own act and deed. In all else, "the Son did nothing of Himself, but only what He saw the Father doing." But in this one matter, special power was given Him to take individual and personal action. The one thing in the flesh He was ever free to do of His own free choice was to lay down His life for the sheep. How great, how very great, is His love. Why has He loved us so? I cannot tell. Surely the Son of God might have discovered, or made (!), creatures more worthy of His attachment. But it was not so. Love knows no reason, no law. He has loved us with the greatest love of all, the love that heeds not life itself in the service of the beloved Nothing that is good will He withhold from His own, His loved, His chosen, His blood-Bought Believe in him!
GOD BLESS YOU
LAWRENCE AND JULIE
Friday, July 20, 2007
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