Text: John 10:11-18
Beloved
in Christ, preachers often try to use illustrations to help make their point.
But I must confess that I am not impressed by many of them. You can compare
God’s kingdom to jet-skiing or to French fries or to an old Waylon Jennings
song, and I’m sure that you can find some sort of similarity. But it’s
usually a trivial connection, some superficial way that the two are alike.
There is one—and just one—point of comparison between these illustrations and
divine truth.
Those
illustrations are not like the parables Jesus told. One pastor has
explained this well. He said that our Lord’s parables are like sturdy houses.
You can go inside of them and look around and see all sorts of things. In fact,
our Lord’s parables invite you to come on in and sit down for a while and enjoy
the scenery all around. This is especially true of all the times our Lord
speaks of sheep and shepherds. What helps is that He isn’t the first person to
speak about the relationship between God and His people in terms of a shepherd
and sheep. Ever since at least the days of Moses, prophets have used that
particular metaphor. It works on several levels: God takes care of us as a
shepherd looks after sheep; we wander away from God, as sheep wander from their
shepherd; there are bad shepherds who don’t look after the interests of the
sheep; and so forth. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah are just some of the
prophets to use that imagery. In the New Testament Peter uses that metaphor, as
does our Lord. In fact, in each of the four gospels there is at least one “good
shepherd” reference or parable.
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| The Faithless Shepherd by Pieter Brueghel the Younger |
It’s
useful to ask, then, whenever you encounter a parable involving sheep or
shepherds to ask just exactly what is being emphasized in this particular case.
The framework will always be the same, but the emphasis will differ. So, for
example, when you read Psalm 23, there is nothing said about bad shepherds, but
Ezekiel talks at length about them. Thus, when we approach today’s text, we see
that Jesus uses the image of a shepherd and a sheep to make three main points.
First,
Jesus proclaims Himself to be the Good Shepherd, which He defines as the one
who is truly willing to lay down His life for the sheep. He contrasts Himself
with the hired hands, who have no such dedication. Shepherding is dangerous,
dirty work. On a good day a shepherd has to chase after straying sheep, walk
the sheep over from one pasture to another, and do all sorts of other
exhausting work. But the sheep also face predators who would devour them—and
all who would take care of the sheep expose themselves to the same dangers. A
bear or lion that is intent on devouring some mutton won’t think twice about
harming a tiny shepherd who is getting in its way.
A
hired hand who finds himself in that situation could easily say, “It’s not
worth it” and run away. We all can sympathize with employees facing dangerous
situations where they would be tempted to say, “I’m not paid enough to risk my
life. If the boss wants me to do that, he can take this job and shove it.” And
unless you’re someone like a firefighter, most people would sympathize with
you. And so you can see the hired hands thinking to themselves, “What are these
sheep to me? They don’t listen or cooperate. I always have to drag them out of
trouble, only so that they can get into more. Enough! My life is worth
something—far more than one lousy sheep.”
The
same could be said of us. We’re not that great of a catch. We wander from God
and get ourselves into trouble. We are selfish, lazy, greedy, gluttonous,
licentious, and every other kind of bad adjective that you can muster. Sure,
there are moments when we are cute like sheep. But, morally speaking, we are as
dumb as sheep, too. If we’re not bad all the time, we still get into enough
trouble to make us rather undesirable.
No
wonder that the hired hands decide after a while that we’re not worth the bothers.
These hired hands—the spiritual gurus and teachers of all other religions—have
no problem telling us about all the right sort of things we should be doing.
They, as well as Christ, are eager to tell us that we should lead moral lives
and strive to be excellent people. But when we fail, they leave us on our own.
They don’t want to be bothered with rescuing us. No religion other than
Christianity teaches that we have a Redeemer who has saved us because we
couldn’t save ourselves. But if they leave us to ourselves, what good are they?
They are like hired hands who run away from the sheep when the sheep need them
most.
You
can’t tell the difference between a real shepherd and a hired hand when the
sheep are grazing peacefully on the plain. You can only tell the difference
when the wolf or the lion is bearing down upon them. In the same way, you can’t
tell the difference between the true Good Shepherd and the hired hands (the wannabes)
when life is calm. But when we are entangled in our sins and you hear people
say, “Work it out yourself” or “I told you not to deviate from my advice,” then
you know that you are dealing with a hired hand rather than the Good Shepherd.
For our Good Shepherd longed to save His sheep. He made it His mission, even
though He knew that it would cost Him His life. That is why Christ said, “No
one takes [My life] from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.” No
one got the jump on Jesus. He intentionally laid down His life for us.
But
if you look at the cross and think it went badly for our Lord, you should see
the other guys. Sin, guilt, death, hell, and the devil came out even worse than
our Lord did. In fact, they still haven’t recovered two thousand centuries
later—and they never will. But just three days later our Lord was back in the
flesh, ready to take on all comers. That is why our Lord not only said “I
have authority to lay down” my life but also “I have authority to
take it up again.” Christ remains the Good Shepherd, alive for
eternity.
So
far we have seen that a major point of this parable is that Christ is the Good
Shepherd, one totally dedicated to the sheep, unlike the hired hands. We turn
to the second point He makes, namely, that He knows the sheep and the sheep
know Him. Sheep may have their faults. They wander and get into trouble. But
there is one great virtue about sheep, and that is they listen to their
shepherd’s voice. Shepherds in the Middle East develop their own ten-second
melody that they use to call the sheep. Often they will sing it; sometimes they
will play it on a flute. But sheep learn to recognize that particular song and
will always follow it. You can have a dozen flocks all come together at the
same watering hole and mix together, but the shepherds won’t worry. When the
shepherd starts calling the sheep, his sheep come and the other sheep ignore
him.
You
can easily see the application to us Christians. We are often in the hubbub of
life, where we graze and drink next to people who are not Christians. Wherever
you go, you see that often the flock of Christians is mixed in with the flocks
of other religions. We do not live in isolation, like Old Order Amish or like
Trappist monks. We live, work, and play cheek by jowl with people of other
faiths. But above the din around us we hear the words of Christ. More than
that, we spend time gathered as His flock, attuning our ears to hear His Word
so that we won’t be confused by the noise all around us.
The
sheep know the shepherd, but the shepherd also knows the sheep. To us all sheep
look alike. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But a shepherd can tell
his sheep from quite a distance. In the same way, our Lord knows us
individually. We are not just one more number. He cares for us as a person. We
have a hard time really knowing more than 150 people. Yes, we can have
acquaintances that number well into the hundreds, even thousands, but it is
impossible for us to know all these people well. But our Lord is no ordinary
human being. He is the Son of God. And He knows us as a shepherd knows each
member of his flock.
Finally,
our Lord makes one last point: “I have other sheep that are not of this
fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will
be one flock, one shepherd.” Most flocks are rather stable. Sure, new
sheep are born into the flock and old ones die off. But the flock remains much
the same. You don’t typically see sheep from other flocks added to an existing
flock. It probably happens occasionally, as people inherit someone else’s
sheep, but it is not a common occurrence. But our Lord is concerned to increase
the size of His flock.
We
shouldn’t think of this as just Christ getting greedy and wanting to have a
bigger market share. This isn’t a business strategy on His part, as if all He
cared about was having a thriving and growing company. No, He wants to save
people. He wants a bigger flock because He wants more people to know the
forgiveness of sins and the new life that He alone can give. It is important to
remember this truth in our own congregation as we seek to grow. We want to
become a larger church and are not content to be a small congregation. But we
are not doing so to have a better income stream or to have more volunteers or
to get greater recognition. We want people to experience the salvation Jesus
Christ has won. And so in all that we say and do, we will lift up and proclaim
Jesus as the Good Shepherd, so that His voice may be heard and sheep added to
His eternal fold.
Beloved
in Christ, may you find in Christ the Good Shepherd who delights in taking care
of you, His beloved sheep! In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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