I am the good shepherd. (John 10:11)My wife and I drove past some sheep the other day and she pointed them out. She also commented that you don’t see sheep a whole lot.
I was born and raised in Texas. That is cattle country, pardner. But even so sheep and other stuff, like emus and llamas are coming in. And the problem is most of us don’t really relate to sheep.
However, God did. In the culture Jesus came from sheep were dominant. They used their wool, their milk, their manure for fertilizer and occasionally ate the sheep for supper. But it is something we don’t know much about. Since I have never eaten sheep’s milk cheese (or at least not that I know) I don’t know if it is good or not. I have eaten lamb and kind of like it, although I would hate a steady diet of it.
I have read enough westerns and seen enough cowboys to get some idea of how cattle are handled. But I really don’t understand sheep. I know they are extreme herd animals. They will follow each other practically off a cliff and get scared easily. I have also found out in the past several years that they can be mean and bite.
The shepherd takes all this into consideration I have found. He knows they are unpleasant little creatures but works with them. I even understand they name the sheep. I know cowboys will usually name one or two dominant cows or bulls, but shepherds have a greater knowledge of their sheep.
They also have to protect them because, unlike cattle, they are helpless and cannot take care of themselves. They are also stupid.
It is a little irritating sometimes for me to be likened to a sheep. I don’t mind being a bull. I saw a male longhorn the other day with impressive forward sweeping horns. They were probably two feet long. I like being like that.
But a sheep. That is what he called us though. Why? Because we can be stupid and follow each other into problems. Get a bunch of guys in a bar together and you got problems waiting to happen. Get them liquored up and the problems mount. And in general people are like that. Problems waiting to happen.
Jesus said he was a shepherd that loved his sheep and wanted to help them. He said his care for them was out of love, not out of a career move.
His intervention in our lives is to help us find what is right, and to help us come back to God. He is not here to raise us then butcher us. He is here to love us and for us to love him. And unlike sheep, he wants us to love each other.
And we follow him like sheep. The sheep were comfortable with the shepherd and Jesus wants us comfortable with him too.
The Good Shepherd wants us to follow him to heaven. And he loves us.
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