'I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. 15.
As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down My
life for the sheep.'—JOHN x. 14,15.
'I am the Good Shepherd.' Perhaps even Christ never spoke more fruitful
words than these. Just think how many solitary, wearied hearts they
have cheered, and what a wealth of encouragement and comfort there has
been in them for all generations. The little child as it lays itself
down to sleep, cries—
'Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,
Bless Thy little lamb to-night,'
and the old man lays himself down to die murmuring to himself, 'Though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil,
for Thou art with me.' 'I am the Good Shepherd.' No preaching can do
anything but weaken and dilute the force of such words, and yet, though
in all their sweet, homely simplicity they appeal to every heart, there
are great depths in them that are worth pondering, and profound
thoughts that need some elucidation.
There are three points to be noticed—First, the general force of the
metaphor, and then the two specific applications of it which our Lord
Himself makes.
I. First of all, then, let me say a few words as to the general
application of the metaphor. The usual notion of these words confines
itself to the natural meaning, and runs out into very true, but perhaps
a little sentimental, considerations, laying hold of what is so plain
on the very surface that I need not spend any time in speaking about
it. Christ's pattern is my law; Christ's providence is my guidance and
defence—which in the present case means Christ's companionship—is my
safety, my sustenance—which in the present case means that Christ
Himself is the bread of my soul. The Good Shepherd exercises care,
which absolves the sheep from care, and in the present case means that
my only duty is meek following and quiet trust. 'I am the Good
Shepherd'—here is guidance, guardianship, companionship, sustenance—all
responsibility laid upon His broad shoulders, and all tenderness in His
deep heart, and so for us simple obedience and quiet trust.
Another way by which we get the whole significance of this symbol is by
noticing how the idea is strengthened by the word that accompanies it.
Christ does not say 'I am a Shepherd,' but He says, 'I am _the good_
Shepherd.' At first sight that word 'good' is interpreted, as I have
said, in a kind of sentimental, poetic way, as expressing our Lord's
tenderness and love and care; but I do not think that is the full
meaning here. You find up and down this Gospel of St. John phrases such
as, 'I am the true bread,' 'I am the true vine,' and the meaning of the
word that is here translated 'good' is very nearly parallel with that
idea. The true bread, the true vine, the true Shepherd—which comes to
this, to use modern phraseology, that Jesus Christ, in His relation to
you and me, fulfils all that in figure and shadow is represented to the
meditative eye by that lower relationship between the material shepherd
and his sheep. That is the picture, this the reality. There is another
point to be made clear, and that is, that whilst the word 'good' is
perhaps a fair enough representation of that which is employed by our
Lord, there is a special force and significance attached to the
original, which is lost in our Bible. I do not know that it could have
been preserved; but still it is necessary to state it. The expression
here is the one that is generally rendered 'fair,' or 'lovely,' or
'beautiful,' and it belongs to the genius of that wonderful tongue in
which the New Testament is written that it has a name for moral purity,
considered as being lovely, the highest goodness, and the serenest
beauty, which was what the old Greeks taught, howsoever little they may
have practised it in their lives. And so here the thought is that _the_
Shepherd stands before us, the realisation of all which that name
means, set forth in such a fashion as to be infinitely lovely and
perfectly fair, and to draw the admiration of any man who can
appreciate that which is beautiful, and can admire that which is of
good report.
There is another point still in reference to this first view of the
text. Our Lord not only declares that He is the reality of which the
earthly shepherd is the shadow, and that He as such is the flawless,
perfect One, but that He alone is the reality. 'I am the Good Shepherd;
in Me and in Me alone is that which men need.' And that leads me to
another point which must just be mentioned, that we shall not reach the
full meaning of these great words without taking into account the
history of the metaphor in the Old Testament. Christ gives a second
edition of the figure, and we are to remember all that went before.
'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want'; 'Thou leddest Thy people
like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.' These are but specimens
of a continuous series of utterances in the old Revelation in which
Jehovah Himself is the Shepherd of mankind; and there is also another
class of passages of which I will quote one or two. 'He shall feed His
flock like a shepherd, and carry them in His arms.' 'Awake, O sword,
against the Man who is my fellow; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep
shall be scattered.' There were, we should remember, two streams of
representation, according to the one of which God Himself was the
Shepherd of Israel, and according to the other of which the Messiah was
the Shepherd; and here, as I believe, Jesus lays His hand on both the
one and the other, and says: 'They are Mine, and they testify of Me.'
So sweet, so gracious are the words, that we lose the sense of the
grandeur of them, and need to think before we are able to understand
how great and immense the claim that is made here upon our faith, and
that this Man stands before us and arrogates to Himself the divine
prerogative witnessed from of old by psalmist and prophet, and says
that for Him were meant the prophecies of ancient times that spake of a
human shepherd, and asserts that all the sustenance, care, authority,
command, which the emblem suggests meet in Him in perfect measure.
II. Now let us turn to the two special points which our Lord emphasises
here, as being those in which His relation as the Good Shepherd is most
conspicuously given. The language of my text runs: '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.' Our Western ways fail to bring
out the full meaning of the emblem; but all Eastern travellers tell us
what a strange bond of sympathy and loving regard, and docile
recognition, springs up between the shepherd and his sheep away there
in the Eastern pastures and deserts; and how he knows every one, though
to a stranger's eye they are so like each other; and how even the dumb
instincts and the narrow intelligence of the silly sheep recognise the
shepherd, and will not be deceived by shepherd's garments worn to
deceive, and will not follow the voice of a stranger.
But we must further note that Christ lays hold of the dumb instincts of
the animal, as illustrating, at the one end of the scale, the relation
between Him and His followers, and lays hold of the communion between
the Father and the Son at the other end of the scale, as illustrating
the same thing. 'I know My sheep.' That is a knowledge like the
knowledge of the shepherd, a bond of close intimacy. But He does not
know them by reason of looking at them and thinking about them. It is
something far more blessed than that. He knows me because He loves me;
He knows me because He has sympathy with me, and I know Him, if I know
Him at all, by my love, and I know Him by my sympathy, and I know Him
by my communion. A loveless heart does not know the Shepherd, and
unless the Shepherd's heart was all love He would not know His sheep.
The Shepherd's love is an individualised love. He knows His flock as a
flock because He knows the units of it, and we can rest ourselves upon
the personal knowledge, which is personal love and sympathy, of Jesus
Christ. 'And My sheep know Me'—not by force of intellect, not by
understanding certain truths, all-important as that may be, but by
having our hearts harmonised in Him, and our spirits put into sympathy
and communion with Him. 'They know Me,' and rest comes with the
knowledge; 'they know Me,' and in that knowing is the best answer to
all doubt and fear. They are exposed to danger, but in the fold they
can go quietly to rest, for they know that He is at the door watching
through all dangers.
III. Turn for a moment to the last point, 'I lay down My life for the
sheep.' I have said that our Western ways fail to bring out fully the
element of the metaphor which refers to the kind of sympathy between
the shepherd and the sheep; and our Western life also fails to bring
out this other element also. Shepherds in England never have need to
lay down their life for the sheep. Shepherds in Palestine often did,
and sometimes do. You remember David with the lion and the bear, which
is but an illustration of the reality which underlies this metaphor.
So, then, in some profound way, the shepherd's death is the sheep's
safety. First of all, look at that most unmistakable, emphatic—I was
going to say vehement, at any rate, intense—expression of the absolute
voluntariness of Christ's death, 'I lay down My life,' as a man might
strip off a vesture. And this application of the metaphor is made all
the stronger by the words which follow: 'Therefore doth My Father love
Me, because I lay down My life that I might take it again. No man
taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it again.' We read, 'Smite the shepherd,
and the sheep shall be scattered,' but here, somehow or other, the
smiting of the Shepherd is not the scattering but the gathering of the
flock. Here, somehow or other, the dead Shepherd has power to guard, to
guide, to defend them. Here, somehow or other, the death of the
Shepherd is the security of the sheep; and I say to you, the flock,
that for every soul the entrance into the flock of God is through the
door of the dying Christ, who laid down His life for the sheep, and
makes them His sheep who trust in Him.
'OTHER SHEEP'
[Footnote: Preached before the Baptist Missionary Society.]
'Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must
bring, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock
and one Shepherd.'—JOHN x. 16 (R.V.).
There were many strange and bitter lessons in this discourse for the
false shepherds, the Pharisees, to whom it was first spoken. But there
was not one which would jar more upon their minds, and as they fancied,
on their sacredest convictions, than this, that God's flock was wider
than God's fold. Our Lord distinctly recognises Judaism with its middle
wall of partition as a divine institution, and then as distinctly
carries His gaze beyond it. To His hearers 'this fold,' their own
national polity, held all the flock. Without were dogs, a doleful land,
where 'the wild beasts of the desert met with the wild beasts of the
islands.' And now this new Teacher, not content with declaring them
hirelings, and Himself the only true Shepherd of Israel, breaks down
the hedges and speaks of Himself as the Shepherd of men. No wonder that
they said, 'He hath a devil and is mad.'
During His earthly life our Lord, as we know, confined His own personal
ministry for the most part to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Not exclusively so, for He made at least one journey into the coasts of
Tyre and Sidon, teaching and healing; a Syro-Phcenician woman held His
feet, and received her request; and one of His miracles, of feeding the
multitude, was wrought for hungry Gentiles. But while His work was in
Israel, it was for mankind; and while 'this fold,' generally speaking,
circumscribed His toils, it did not confine His love nor His thoughts.
More than once world-wide declarations and promises broke from His
lips, even before the final universal commission, 'Preach the Gospel to
every creature.' 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' 'I
am the Light of the world.' These and other similar sayings give us His
lofty consciousness that He has received 'the heathen for His
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.'
Parallel with them in substance are the words before us, which, for our
present purpose, we may regard as containing lessons from our Lord
Himself of how He looked and would have us look on the heathen world,
on His work and ours, and on the certain issues of both.