The Ideal Shepherd
“I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth his Ufe for the sheep.” — John x. ii.
jypap4j/HIS chapter is a pastoral idyll, composed and spoken by the Chief Shepherd Himself. It resembles some masterpiece of art, which one visits for days together, only finding on each successive occasion some nely beauty. It naturally falls into the three divisions of morning, noon, and evening. 7/ IS morning. The dew lies heavy on the upland wolds; the fresh morning breeze is airing the fevered world; the sun’s pavilion glows with gorgeous colours, as he prepares to emerge on his daily pilgrimage; and the shepherds stand knocking at the barred gates of the fold, calling to the porter to let them have their flocks. When the door opens, each calls to his own sheep, and leads them forth, and they follow him to pastures green and waters still. They would flee from a strange voice; but they know their shepherds.
Is not this a true picture of the response which Christ’s own give to his voice? Many are the voices which fall on the ears of men in the early morning of their life, summoning them to follow; and in the majority of cases with only too much success. In the hubbub the voice of the true Shepherd is undetected or unheeded, except by a few. But these hear its soft gentle tones, and obey, and follow; and to do so is certain evidence that they are his own. The desire to hear and follow Jesus proves that you are his sheep (4, 8, 27).
Again, It is noon. The downs are baking in the scorching glare, and every stone burns like fire; but in that oppressive hour the shepherd remembers a little green glen, where a tranquil lake reflects the azure sky, or a brooklet babbles musically over the pebbles. The grass is green and the boulders cast black shadows. Perhaps an old fold is there, with open doorway, so that the sheep may go in for shelter or out for pasture, till the shadow; begin to climb stealthily up the hills.
Thus our Beloved makes his flock rest at noon. He is not Shepherd alone, but fold. In Him as in a safe enclosure we lie down secure. He is the secret place of the Most High, in whom our life is hidden. Nor is He the fold only. He is also the door; there is no ingress to rest, or egress to pasture, except through Him. We can get pasture, abundant life, and salvation only by the Lord Jesus.
Lastly, // is evening. The sun is setting, the air is becoming chill, the valleys are deep in gloom. The shepherd hastens downward with his flock to the fold. They are descending together the last dark gorge, densely shadowed by foliage. Suddenly the ominous snarl and scream tell that a wolf has sprung from the thicket, and seized on one of the hindmost ewes or tender lambs; and then the shepherd rushes to the rear, prepared to lay down his life, if needs be, to save. And who can view the struggle which ensues between the shepherd and the wolf, without being reminded of the fourfold allusion of our Lord to the fact that He was about to lay down his life for the sheep (ii, 15, 17, 18).
L The Double Contrast to the Good Shepherd. — Good does not mean benevolent and kind; but genuine and true. And its significance is pointed by the contrast with the thief and the hireling; by which it appears that the Good Shepherd is One who is imbued with the true spirit of his work, and is an enthusiast in it, not for pay or reward, but by the compulsion of the noble instincts of his soul.
Robbers may turn shepherds, climbing the walls of the fold, or swooping down on the flock and driving it off, as Nabal’s were seized on Mount Carmel. But their purpose is for the flesh and fleece, to kill and to destroy. They have no more the
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true shepherd’s heart than a bandit has a soldier’s or a pirate a sailor’s.
Many such nominal shepherds had the Jews in their national history: kings ruling for their own aggrandisement; teachers who prophesied false and smooth things for place and pelf; Pharisees who lined their nests with what they appropriated wrongfully. Such were the thieves and robbers who came before the Good Shepherd, stealing from God his glory, from men their souls and goods. What a contrast was the Saviour, who expected no reward but hatred and a crown of thorns a cross and a borrowed tomb, and whose supreme object was to give life, and to give it more abundantly — abundant as the flowers of May; exhaustless as the perennial fountains of his own being; infinite as the nature of God!
The hireling, too, may turn shepherd, and, to a certain point, may do his work with credit. He will not desert the flock for frost, or hail, or a thunder shower. His pay will be more than an equivalent for hardship in these respects. But when it comes to the supreme test of sacrificing the life, he breaks down. Love alone can serve a man voluntarily to lay down his life. Of what use is hire to a dead man? “He that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and fleeth; and the wolf Cometh and scattereth them.”
There are good men about the world, in the Church and out of it, who have come to sheep-tending as an occupation, because it affords a means of livelihood; men who become pastors because there is a family living to be filled, or the position is an honourable one. Such do their work fairly well, so long as there is no particular danger to be faced. But when the winds of persecution are let loose, and the fires are lit, and the dragoons scour the moors, they renounce their office, and even endeavour to efface the vestiges of their calling (Zee. xiii. 5-7).
Very different to this has been the spirit of the true shepherd, revealed in hundreds of cases of Church history, and above all in our blessed Lord. He has received a great reward, which dazzled his gaze throughout his earthly life. “For the joy set before Him He endured the cross.” But there was nothing
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selfish in it And it was not for this akme that He fizIfiDed his seiPset ta He loved as. He had taken as to be his own. He had set his heart npcm as. And when the question arose of delireiing os frmn peril. He ttever hesitated to lay down his fife. It was his own act and deed. ‘^ I lay it down of Mysel£°
For the most part his life was not his own, bat his Father’s in Him; yet special power was givoi Him diat He shoold be able to take individoal and pets(Hial actim in ttvi< matter. “He had power to lay it down, and power to take it again.”* And as the vohmtariness of his sacrifice anto death Is insisted on, there comes oot more eridoitly die mighty pasaon ot his love for OS who hear his voice, and may therefore claim to be his own. Why has He loved us thus? We cannot teH It is a mystery which win for ever baffle as; bat love knows- no reascMi, im) law. Sorely the Son of God might have discovered, or made, beings more worthy of his attachmeoL Bat it was not to be so. He has loved as with the greatest love of all, the love that recks not the cost of life; and there is nothing now of good which He win withhold from his own, his loved, his chosoi and purchased flock.
II. The Work of the Good Shepherd.
( i) Hts bunoledge cf Ids sheep. — 1^^ Re-ised Version brings oat the exquisite meaning of verses 14 and 15, which was somewhat obscured in the older version: “I know mine own, and mine own know Me; even as the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father.”
The Eastern shepheld knows all the particulars of each of his sheep; its genealogy, defects, temper, and tastes, and onbodies some one of these in the name he gives iL Thus did the Father know an about that one Lamb which stood in so peculiar a relationship to Himself There was nothing xa Jesus hidden from the Father. His eyes beheld his substance, when it was yet imperfect; and in his book were all his members written, when as yet there was none of them, whher of his mystical ac cf his physical body. Who shal ejqJore adeqtiately elaborate the perfect knowledge subsisting bttween the Father and the S<hi before the worlds were made?
And it is just in this way, with a Divine, comprehensive, and perfect knowledge, that the Lord Jesus knows each of us. He is of a quick understanding to take in our past, with its sad and bitter failures, and our present with its unrealized longings. He knows our downsitting and uprising; our motives so often misunderstood; our anxieties, which cast their shadows over our lives; our dread; our hopes and fears. He intermeddles with the bitterness of our hearts, known only to us and Him. He scrutinizes each guest as it enters, and needs no census to tell Him the inmates of our hearts. “There is not a word on our tongue, but Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether.” It is very blessed to be known thus; so that we do not need to assume a disguise, or enter into laboured explanations. He cannot be surprised, or taken unawares by anything we may tell Him.
Let us, on our part, seek to know Him as He knew the Father; the eyes of our heart being enlightened; the soul illumined by the knowledge which is born of sympathy, fellowship, and purity.
(2) His seeking love. — Again the Revised Version, in ver. 16, gives us the true intention of our Saviour’s words. “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring (lead), and they shall hear my voice, and they shall become one flock, one Shepherd.”
There may be, and there will be, many folds. By the very constitution of our minds we are sure to have different views of truth, of church government, and of the best methods of expressing our love and worship. And there are many who would have us believe that if we do not belong to their special fold, we have no right to assume that we belong to the flock. But it is not so. Our Master never said there would be one fold. There may be many folds, yet one flock; even as there is one Shepherd. The more one climbs up the mountain side, the less one thinks of the hurdles that pen the sheep below in the valley, and the more one rejoices in the essential unity of the flock. Whatever may be your special fold, the one question is: Do you hear and obey the Shepherd’s voice? If so, y’ou belong to the one flock, part of which is on that and part on this, side of a narrow parting brook.
These other sheep must be the Gentiles — ourselves. Though He belonged by birth to the most exclusive race that has ever existed, our Lord’s sympathies overflowed the narrow limits of national prejudice. He was the Son of Man; and in these words He not only showed that his heart was set on us, but He sketched the work which was to occupy Him through the ages. Ever since that moment He has been bringing in these other sheep, and folding them. Perhaps the work is almost done, and the flock complete; and soon, as He leads his blood-bought ones forth to the pasture-lands of eternity, their unity shall be manifest, and the world shall admire and believe (John xvii. 21).
(3) Hz’s words to his own. — “He calls them by name.” We often speak to the dumb animals of our homes, telling them words which they can hardly understand, and to which they can certainly give no response. But there is a dialogue ever in process between the Good Shepherd and his own. He not only calls them by name as He leads them forth, but He talks to them, encouraging, soothing, communing with them about his purposes, explaining his reasons, indicting his commands.
Holy souls become aware of impressions which are made on them from time to time, promptings, inspirations, largely through the words of Scripture, and sometimes otherwise, which they recognise as the Shepherd’s voice. That voice ever calls to self-sacrifice, fellowship, purity, and is diflerent to all other voices. And there grows up a response, the more specially so when the path is lonely, and the sheep keeps close to its Shepherd’s heel. Those who follow very nearly behind Him will bear witness to the perpetual converse by which the human friend is able to keep in touch with the Divine.
(4) His care of his own. — “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” Time wears out all things else. It crumbles the mountains, dims the sunshine, loosens the machinery of the universe; but it cannot touch or impair the life of the blessed God, whether it be in Himself, or imparted through Jesus Christ to the hearts of those who love Him, When once that life has come to indwell the believer’s heart it must remain. Beneath worldliness, carelessness, and frivolrty, burning feebly perhaps, almost quenched in the heavy atmosphere, it is there as an incorruptible seed.
Christ’s sheep shall never perish. They may wander far from Him, lose all joy and comfort, fall under the rebuke of men, and seem to be living under a cloud; but, if they are really his, his honour is pledged to seek them out in the cloudy and dark day, and bring them back to Himself His body cannot be dismembered; He cannot forfeit that which it has cost Him so much to purchase. He would rather lose his throne than one of his sheep; for the lion of the pit would glory over Him, and it would be a fatal blemish on his escutcheon that He had attempted but had failed to perform.
You may be a very lame and timid and worthless sheep; but you were purchased by the Shepherd’s blood, because He loved you so. There is not a wild beast in all hell that He has not vanquished and put beneath his feet; there is no fear, therefore, of his ability, as there is none of his love. He will deliver you from the lion and the bear, and bring you in triumph to the fold, with all the rest.