S. The Shepherd of the Sheep

THE SHEPHERD OF THE SHEEP

“I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and? lay down my life for the sheep.” - John 10:14-15

TWO things the Lord here declares concerning himself; first, what he is; and secondly, what he does. He is the good shepherd, and in that character he claims to be more than a mere hireling, or hired servant (John 10:11-12); and, that being his character, he acts accordingly. He does not desert; he saves (John 10:13-15). Two things therefore come up for consideration:

I. The good shepherd in his relations as such; and

II. His work.

I. The shepherd stands in a twofold relation; on the one hand, to him whose shepherd he is by authoritative appointment; and, on the other hand, to those who are his sheep, by free gift in the gospel, and by personal appropriation in the exercise of faith, wrought in them by the Spirit. This double relationship is emphatically and affectionately brought out in the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th, when rightly rendered: “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me and I know the Father.” This is our Lord’s common way, especially in this Gospel, of describing his relation to his people by the analogy of his own relation to the Father. Thus (John 15:9-10): “As the father hath, loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” There is a circulation of life-blood, or love, from the Father, through the Son’s keeping the Father’s commandments, and back again, through your keeping the Son’s commandments, to the Father; the First and the Last, the beginning and the end, whose name is love. That flux and reflux between the Father and the Son, between the Son and us, is wonderful in itself; and it is wonderfully brought out in these words of our Lord: “I know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father.” For, as a shepherd, the Lord Jesus recognises one over him, from whom he receives the sheep; as well as myriads under him, whom he brings, from whatever wanderings, into one blessed fold. If he is to be the good shepherd; he must be faithful to both, and must possess the confidence of both. The office of a shepherd implies subordination. A shepherd is a servant acting under authority; he acts by commission from his master, and in trust for his master. To be the shepherd, therefore, of the Father’s sheep, the Son became himself the servant of the Father; and in that character declared his subjection to the Father: “My Father is greater than I.” “My Father, which gave me the sheep, is greater than all.” In this view, it deeply concerns the sheep to know in what relation the shepherd stands to the Father, who is Lord of all. Is it into the hands of a hireling that the sheep are given? He may be so far, as a hireling, honest and well-meaning; but he has no special, loving interest in the charge committed to him. He may be well enough disposed to do his duty faithfully; and, in ordinary circumstances, he may do his duty satisfactorily. But, in a critical emergency, he cannot be safely trusted. The wolf is coming! what does he do? Ah! he says, it is not really a wolf after all; or, not a wolf so hungry and ravenous as he looks. He means not to devour, but to frighten the sheep; or, when he sees their pitiful case, he may relent, and accept of some accommodation. Things may not come to the last extremities. So a hireling may calculate and reason; not because he is very dishonest, but simply because he is a hireling. And is not this the sort of reasoning and calculation upon which, without much conscious dishonesty, self-righteousness or self-justification, in all its workings and manifestations, invariably proceeds? It comes in, with some delusive shield, between the poor sheep and the devouring wolf, whispering peace, when there is no peace. But the wolf comes. My sin finds me out. Guilt weighs me down. Judgment, eternal judgment, stares me in the face. Where, then, is the hireling shepherd? Where is he who would treat the case upon any mere mercenary method of compromise or evasion? Where must I be but for that gracious voice: “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

Behold, then, the good shepherd! Consider him first in his relation to him who giveth him the sheep. The Father knoweth me. He knoweth me in a manner and in a sense unique, peculiar, and exclusive. No one knoweth the Son but the Father. It is as the shepherd of the sheep that the Lord Jesus so speaks. In that character he is the Father’s servant. But he is no ordinary servant. Behold my chosen servant; my soul’s delight; my beloved Son. So the Father knows him, as the shepherd, and so also is he known by the sheep. He is commended to your intelligent acquaintance and affectionate embrace, by the Father’s intimate oneness with him. You know him as the Father knows him; know him so as to love him as the Father loves him.

Consider him also, secondly, in his relation to the sheep. He knows them as he knows the Father. He knows the Father in a sense as intimate and peculiar as that in which the Father knows him. He knows the Father’s nature, being himself partaker of it. He knows the Father’s counsels, being himself one with him in them; and being also their sole executor. He knows the Father’s will, for he delights to do it. He is one with the Father in his very being, and in all his works; above all, in his work of grace. He is not as a stranger or hireling in that work; knowing little and caring less about the character and claims, the interest and honour, of him by whom he is employed in that work. He is the Son with whom all the Father’s purposes are shared, and to whom the Father’s glory is infinitely dear. Not as a stranger or hireling does he regard the service he has to render in the capacity of shepherd. No! but as the Eternal Wisdom, who was with the Father from the beginning of creation, and was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. So he knows, and knowing loves him whose shepherd he is. And so he knows, and knowing loves, the sheep; with a knowledge and love corresponding to his knowledge and love of him whose sheep they are; a knowledge and love of the same source and the same character. The hireling, the stranger, has no near or personal interest in the flock he may be appointed to tend. They do not belong to him. There is no special tie between them and him. He cannot therefore be expected to know them very intimately, or so as to make their case his own. But Jesus, the good shepherd, knows the sheep, every one of them individually, as well as the whole collectively. Far as they may be, many of them, from the pale of any particular communion, widely scattered throughout all lands, separated by barriers of every sort, material, moral, ecclesiastical; hidden from the world’s notice; unknown to one another; unacknowledged by one another, - there is one who knows and acknowledges them all. Though all else disown them yet will not he. They are mine, he says. I have them, I must bring them.! blessed must. He must bring them; all of them. They shall hear him. He knows them, and must bring them, as his own. And how does he know them? As possessed of certain outward privileges? As connected with any select society? As gathered by baptism or communion into any one favoured church? No. For, whatever that church may be, he may still say of it: “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring.” No, He knows them first as given to him by the Father (John 10:29); he knows them, secondly, as hearing his voice and following him. What blessed grounds of knowledge these! How gracious!

1. They are given to him by the Father; and, as the Father’s gift, he knows them. He holds them as a sacred trust, a precious possession. He has them near to him; he has them in his heart, in his hand. None shall pluck them out of his hand. They are given to him by the Father; the token of the Father’s approval of him; his acceptance of him as the shepherd. No other reward did the Son ask in freely consenting to take the shepherd’s office, but the gift of these poor sheep. Hence his knowing the sheep corresponds to his knowing the Father, as giving him the sheep. It is the selfsame knowledge.

2. Jesus knows the sheep as hearing his voice and following him. In respect of this ground also of his knowledge of them, his knowing them corresponds to his knowing the Father. He knows them as he knows the Father, and because he knows the Father, For, knowing the Father, he knows the Father’s purpose in giving him the sheep. And the Father knows him as fulfilling that purpose. Therefore, when he looks on those in whom that purpose is being fulfilled; in whom he sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied; whom, as himself knowing the Father, he is getting to know him as the Father knows him, in the character of the shepherd-Saviour; whom he is bringing in, through himself, as the righteous door into the fold of the Father’s favour; whom he is quickening and reviving, nourishing and refreshing; whom he is making able to hear his voice, and willing to follow him; he cannot but know them as he knows the Father. He cannot but care for them; he cannot but remember them. He has identified himself with them, even as he is himself identified with the Father. They are to him, in a deep sense, what he is himself to the Father. He knows them by intimate acquaintance with all their infirmities; by sympathy with them in all their sorrows. He knows them by the progress of his Spirit’s work in them, by the ever fresh recollection of his own work for them. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, she may forget;” yet will not he forget, or ever cease to know, his sheep. He has graven them on the palms of his hands. In the prints left there by the nails, in the hollow of his pierced side, he has marks and memorials by which he must ever know and remember those whose redemption cost him so dear; to whom he reveals the Father as loving them as he loveth him, and glorifying them as he glorifies him.

Behold, then, ye sheep of his pasture, behold and see what a shepherd is yours! Is he one who, when the wolf is coming, will evade the danger, saving himself and leaving the sheep to perish? Will he, in the face of wrath and judgment, shrink from what is needful to vindicate the Father’s rights and secure the safety of the sheep? Nay; do you not hear him saying, “I lay down my life for the sheep?”

II. The work of the good shepherd, or what he does, comes now into consideration. It is his laying down his life for the sheep. That is the great fact in which his knowledge of the Father and of the sheep expresses itself. And, like the knowledge of which it is the expression, it may be viewed in two distinct lights; as regards the Father and the sheep. But a preliminary observation must be made. - His laying down his life is in the strictest sense a voluntary act; it is declared to be so very emphatically afterwards (John 10:18); and it is asserted here. This is a vital element in his entire work. The whole of his humiliation from first to last, the whole of his obedience unto death, was spontaneous and voluntary. This is obviously true of the first step taken, when, being in the form of God, he assumed the form of a servant. But having taken that step, being found in fashion as a man, does he not become subject to all the conditions of our humanity. Yes! if he assumed our nature in its fallen state, corrupt and sinful, if he came among us with any taint of our sin, or any liability to its doom, he could not avoid death. He could not, in that case, say of himself, “I lay down my life;” for in saying that, he is not speaking of what he had in his power, of what was at his discretion, before he became incarnate; no, but of what at that very moment was matter of free choice with him. “I lay down my life.” Nor is there anything inconsistent with this view in his prayer of agony in the garden of Gethsemane, “my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” The prayer is a most affecting proof of the necessity of his death, for the accomplishment of the Father’s Will, in the expiation of our guilt, and the salvation of our souls. It is no proof of its being necessary by the constitution of his human nature. The mystery of his unknown sufferings is now begun; the cup of divine wrath is presented to his lips; filled to overflowing for the overflowing fulness of our sin? Must he drink it? Can the will of God for the redemption of a lost race be in no other way accomplished? Can there be no forgiveness, no reconciliation, otherwise than through his cross? Is there no other method of grace within the compass of all the resources of infinite wisdom and infinite power? Must the judgment be endured, the penalty paid to the uttermost? Be it so. There is still a willing victim to whom the glory of the Father, and the salvation of the sheep are dear. His language still is “Lo! I come.” The fire is kindled; the wood laid. No need of the question, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Such being the nature of the fact here stated, let us look at it in the light of the shepherd’s twofold relation to the Father and the sheep.

1. Viewing it in the light of his relation to the Father, we may see in it one chief part, or rather the crowning and culminating instance, the concentrated essence, as it were, of that perfect obedience by which he fulfilled all righteousness. He himself declares (John 10:18) that in laying down his life for the sheep, ultroneously and spontaneously, he his obeying the commandment received by him of his Father; and that he is on that account acceptable to the Father. It is all important thus to regard the one event of the Lord’s death and resurrection as the sure sign, the pledge and seal, of the thoroughly good understanding that there is between him as your shepherd and the Father, whom in that capacity he serves. For it is this which brings out most conspicuously how, as regards this great transaction, he knows the Father, and how the Father consequently knows him. He is faithful to him who has appointed him; faithful even to the death. As shepherd, he has committed to him by the Father a most arduous and painful task; the task of saving the sheep given to him by the Father; and so saving them as to preserve inviolate all the Father’s rights and prerogatives as the Holy One and the Just, the supreme God. The task requires that he shall take his place among the sheep; share their fate; make common cause with them. Nay, more, it requires that, relieving them from their liabilities, he undertakes to bear in their stead their doom; on these terms he willingly accepts the charge; so much does he delight to do the Father’s will; so full of pity is he for the poor lost, wandering sheep. He begins his labours; painfully, in his human nature, learning obedience by the things which he suffers. And now that by experience he finds the hardness of the work, how is he affected and inclined? Is the ardour of his first love quenched? Nay, still the zeal of his Father’s house is eating him up, still it is his meat to do the will of him that sent him, and to finish his work. He has a baptism to be baptized with; and how is he straitened till it be accomplished: enduring the contradiction of sinners against himself, of the very sinners he came to save, he does not, as he justly might, leave them to their fate. He does not faint. He is not weary. In meek and holy majesty he still says, “I must be about my Father’s business.” One dark trial of his faithfulness and obedience is yet before him. A terrible doom approaches the sheep given to him by the Father; and he in their stead must meet it in all its terror. There is no way of evasion or escape. In the appalling judicial calmness of inflexible justice it approaches - death, with its sting and its curse; the sting of guilt; the curse of the broken law. And he, the holy child Jesus, must be made the sin! He, the beloved of the Father, must be made the curse! The Father himself lays this load upon him, and leaves him alone to bear it. In agony, forsaken as one under condemnation, he lays down his life, as the Father hath given him commandment! So safe in his hands is the honour of the Father’s character and the integrity of the Father’s government! He has a commandment, a commission, from the Father, to magnify his law and make it honourable; and he executes it to the very uttermost. In his voluntary death on the cross, his active obedience is proved and perfected.

2. Viewing his death in the light of his relation to the sheep, for whom, in obedience to the Father, he lays down his life, it is to be regarded as forming the principal part, the consummation and essence, of his passive obedience and righteousness; his propitiatory or atoning sacrifice. He lays down his life for the sheep, as not only the obedient servant of the Father, but the representative and surety of the sheep. For the fact of his substitution in their stead is here declared. The wolf, coming on to devour the helpless sheep, is arrested and appeased by the shepherd offering himself to his destroying jaws. Of course, this figure must not be pressed very closely and literally, lest it should seem to give countenance to the idea of our Lord, as shepherd, interposing himself between his people and the great adversary; as if the substitution had reference to him; as if the laying down of that precious life was meant as a ransom paid to Satan. That is a sad perversion of the truth. Doubtless, deliverance from Satan’s assaults and Satan’s power is an immediate result of redemption. But it is not properly itself redemption, or any part of it; not the redemption for which a ransom is righteously demanded and willingly paid. The enemy has no right to demand a ransom. It is not to appease or satisfy him that the good shepherd lays down his life. It is not by purchase but by power that the shepherd rescues the sheep from that ravenous wolf.

Still his doing so is closely connected with his laying down his life for the sheep. He spoils principalities and powers, making a show of them openly in his cross. Through death he destroys him that has the power of death, that is the devil, and delivers them who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage. But the death through which he affected this release is his giving himself as a ransom for many, not to the adversary, but to the Father; to God, the holy law-giver and righteous judge. For it is the Father’s justice, the wrath of God lying upon us, that makes us helpless under the prince whose service we have chosen, and whose lie we are fain to try to believe. That is the secret of his hold upon us. But Jesus, our shepherd, by satisfying that justice, and himself enduring that wrath, emancipates us from the thraldom under which the hopeless sense of condemnation keeps us. Redeeming us from the sentence of divine law and justice, he delivers us out of the hand of all our enemies. So he meets the wolf by laying down his life for the sheep. The transaction itself is with the Father, though one of its results is that the wolf is foiled. The immediate and direct bearing of the transaction is on the relation of the sheep to God. The Saviour-shepherd offers himself a sacrifice to God for you, the sheep. The sacrifice is of infinite worth and value. He gives his life for yours; a ransom infinitely sufficient in itself and in his manner of giving it. It is a life compared with which the life of the whole world, of all the universe, is utterly insignificant. It is a life for which the universe could furnish no equivalent; which is itself more than equivalent for all other life. And then this life is given freely; it is laid down voluntarily; none can take it away; it never could be forfeited; it cannot be demanded by any right; not by right of judgment, for there is no sin; not by right of conquest, for even when crucified through weakness, he lived by the power of God, and had legions of angels at his command.

See your shepherd, Jesus, on the cross! In the presence of earth, and heaven, and hell! He dares all powers above, beneath, around, to sift and try his life, his title to life, and see if they can detect in it any flaw. Man can find no fault in him. Satan has nothing in him. The Father is well pleased in him. On the cross Jesus has power still over his own life. All enemies have tried and none can take it from him! Nor is it forfeited to God, the judge of all. Then at last, he himself, in the calm exercise of his own deliberate and voluntary choice, lays it down; of his own accord he places it on the altar of atonement, as the price of your redemption. He submits to the vicarious punishment and doom. He opens his bosom to receive the sword. The Father’s righteous wrath against your sin enters into his soul. He endures the agony of the curse. It is finished! It is over! Committing his spirit in unshaken love and loyalty to his Father, he bows his head and gives up the ghost! So he lays down his life for the sheep.

Oh! brethren, what a life is there laid down for you! what a rich ransom is paid for you! what poor sinner need now perish in his sins, now that such a sacrifice has been offered! Offered! Yes, and accepted too. For he laid down his life that he might take it again. And this, therefore, now is the ground of your confidence. The God of peace has brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. And he will make you perfect in him in every good work; working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. This view of the good shepherd may well warrant and explain the Psalmist’s steadfast faith in Jehovah his shepherd, (Psalms 23:4) “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” In the valley of the shadow of death the wolf may try to come. The passage through it may not be free from his assaults. It is not, at least, free from dark alarms and distressing thoughts. Even to the sheep, death, and the ills of life preliminary to death, are objects beforehand of seriousness, if not of dread.

True, they cannot now fear death as the ungodly, in their sudden awakening to its reality, may fear it. To them, in virtue of the shepherd’s laying down his life for the sheep, the bitterness of penal death is past. Death is changed from a curse into a blessing; from being the wages of sin into being the gate of life.

Still it is a solemn thing to die; there is enough about death, even at the best, to fill the soul with trembling awe. The dismal gloom of life’s closing scene, the darkened chamber, the anxious looks and streaming tears of friends, the painful weaknesses of a wasted frame, the fears and fancies of an exhausted spirit, the regret of broken ties, the blight of cherished hopes, the natural shrinking from an unknown future, may cast a deep broad shadow over the valley in which you take that one inevitable step which never can be repeated or recalled. Then there are experiences which may affect you more than other men; experiences connected with your very faith. The sensibility of a conscience quickened as well as cleansed by the blood of Christ; the profound sense of the holy sovereignty of God which the believing view of the cross inspires, may deprive a believer’s dying hours of the calmness and composure which souls less susceptible of such impressions may exhibit.

Ah! it is a dangerous and deadly delusion to measure the security of a death-bed by its quietude and repose. Many, very many, are the instances of people falling asleep in peace, who yet do not fall asleep in Jesus. For it is no such rare or difficult an attainment as some imagine it to be, to die with decent tranquillity. There is no charm in death, or in the approach of death, to test or prove the safe state of any one. The truth is that the approach of death often acts as a sedative rather than a stimulant; soothing instead of rousing; inducing a sort of vacant and half conscious somnolency. There are racking pains of body, which must be lulled by opiates, which tend also to stupefy the soul. And there is a general debility whose very prostrate helplessness makes it take the aspect of resignation and repose. Then there is the spell of that wretched refuge which is always at hand; the refuge of self-righteousness and self-justification; stronger often in death than in life; grasping vain hopes of mercy, on the plea of some good resolves. The practical truth must be pressed. The quiet death is not always the most trustworthy (Psalms 73:1-20).

Then, on the other hand, though the righteous man has hope in his death, and his latter end is peace, he is, in very proportion to his righteousness, exposed to peculiar trials. He is exercised to agony about his dealings with God, and God’s dealings with him. He is beset by enemies. Dark suggestions of Satan, aggravating the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death, haunt him; what then is it to sustain and comfort him? Not so much any inward experience, as the outward presence realised to inward faith, of him whose rod and staff will comfort him; the presence of him who says, “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” Thou art with me; thou knowest thy poor sheep; thou sayest “I lay down my life for the sheep,” for thee the least and weakest of them. Therefore I will trust and not be afraid. I hear thy voice speaking peace. “I will not leave thee comfortless; I will come unto thee.” “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” “Lo, I am with thee always to the end.” “It is I: be not afraid.” No, blessed Saviour, thou good shepherd, Jehovah, Jesus, I will fear no evil; I hear thy voice, and I follow thee; I would be with thee where thou art; Lord Jesus receive my spirit.