Sheep and shepherds were a common feature of life for the whole of the Biblical period – thousands of years. Most people had a sheep or two at some point, everyone would have known a shepherd. Sheep and goats would have roamed through villages and towns, down the tracks and roads, through all the landscape. You could not move for sheep. Most people, at some point in the childhood, would have been sent to take sheep to pasture or to water. Everyone knew what a shepherd was, and what made a good shepherd, and what made a bad shepherd.
The first families of the people of God were shepherds – Abraham and Sarah, Rachel and Isaac, Rebekah, Leah and Jacob. All had herds of sheep. In the story of Joseph, what are his brothers doing when he goes to find them, and ends up being sold into Egypt? They’re looking after the flock. They’re shepherds.
It might seem that I am labouring the point, but shepherds are so rare now. I don’t know any shepherds. I see sheep out in the field, but my only experience of them being a daily presence in life is when I’ve been to rural Africa. For us to have even half a chance of hearing this as Jesus’ first hearers did, then we have to understand that he was talking about something that was a basic, common place, element of everybody’s lives.
Given this, it is hardly surprising that sheep and shepherds pop up so often in the Bible. We’re not going to look at all the times that actual sheep and shepherds appear – all the flocks and herds people had, the sacrifices, and the various fallings out that different groups of shepherds had at different times. We’d be here all night. What we are going to do is explore the way in which sheep and shepherds are used as metaphors and illustrations of wider truths, a heritage of thinking that Jesus was drawing on when he made the claim that we heard from John’s eyewitness account of his teaching. “I am the good shepherd.”
The first thing we are going to explore is the idea of God being a shepherd, and how that idea was used in different ways.
The first reference to God as shepherd appears right back in Genesis 48:15.
When Jacob prayed over Joseph and his sons, just before he died, he prayed:
‘May the God before whom my fathers
Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
all my life to this day,
the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
– may he bless these boys.
Jacob had been through a lot of things in his life – falling out with his brother, working for years for his uncle as a shepherd before being able to marry, believing that his son, Joseph, had been killed by wild animals, having to move from the land that had been promised by God to his grandfather Abraham and go to Egypt. Looking back at it all, he saw God’s guiding hand and care for him, saw him as his shepherd.
Centuries later, when the people of God were finally freed from Egypt and led back to the promised land, this was also seen as God shepherding them, as we hear in Psalm 78:52
“he brought his people out like a flock; he led them like sheep through the wilderness.”
This sense of God as shepherd, both personally and for the community leads to praise and worship, as we’ve read in Psalm 100 and sung in Psalm 23.
It is also used as a basis for prayer, and for crying out to God in difficult and painful situations.
Psalm 44:11
You gave us up to be devoured like sheep
and have scattered us among the nations.
Psalm 74:1
O God, why have you rejected us for ever?
Why does your anger smoulder against the sheep of your pasture?
Psalm 28:9
Save your people and bless your inheritance;
be their shepherd and carry them for ever.
These prayers come from a place of fundamental trust that God is the shepherd of God’s people, and a good shepherd at that, whilst being real about the pain when things aren’t going well, and it is difficult to see God at work. They look forward to the future in which God’s shepherding care is clearly visible, when the promises made by God through the prophets are completely fulfilled.
Ezekiel 34:11
11 ‘“For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.
Jeremiah 31:10
‘Hear the word of the Lord, you nations;
proclaim it in distant coastlands:
“He who scattered Israel will gather them
and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.”
Zechariah 10:3b
for the Lord Almighty will care
for his flock, the people of Judah,
and make them like a proud horse in battle.
In these examples we see the people of God remembering ways in which God has shepherded them in the past, asking him to shepherd them in the present, and trusting him to shepherd them in the future.
As well as God being seen as a shepherd, we also find many examples of human leaders being called shepherds. For instance, when that journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land was nearly complete, it was time for Moses to hand over the leadership of the people to someone else, and he prayed, in Numbers 27v16-17
“‘May the Lord, the God who gives breath to all living things, appoint someone over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so that the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.’”
In response to that prayer God instructed Moses to commission Joshua to take on the leadership of the people as they went into the Land.
Perhaps the most well known example of a human leader being a shepherd was King David. In 1 Samuel 17 we discover that he actually was a shepherd before he became king, and drew on this experience when he was talking to Saul about how we would approach Goliath. He trusted the God who had helped him to defend the sheep to help him in this battles as well.
In time David came to see his Kingship as shepherding as well. At times this insight was part of him realising that he had got something wrong. In 2 Samuel 24 we’re told that David commanded a census of the people, something that was against God’s will, and there is a plague as a result. As that is all happening
David prays
“‘I have sinned; I, the shepherd, have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.’”
He had moved to a place where he saw himself as shepherd of the sheep of God.
This self understanding is also backed up by how others saw him
As we read in Psalm 78:70-72
He chose David his servant
and took him from the sheepfolds;
from tending the sheep he brought him
to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
of Israel his inheritance.
And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
with skilful hands he led them.
Following David’s death, and the splitting of the kingdom, there are many examples of poor shepherding from the rulers of the people, and we’ll come on to those in minute, but before we do I think it’s helpful to notice what might be an unexpected reference to a human leader as a shepherd, which is found in
Isaiah 44:28
“God says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd
and will accomplish all that I please;
he will say of Jerusalem, ‘Let it be rebuilt,’
and of the temple, ‘Let its foundations be laid.’”
Cyrus was the Persian king who allowed the people of God to return to Jerusalem and begin rebuilding the temple. We can read about this in the first chapter of Ezra.
Cyrus was a good shepherd for God’s people, a shepherd of God, but as I said there were plenty of bad shepherds, and God’s judgement against them was fierce.
Many of the warnings of judgement are found in the books of the prophets, given during the time the split kingdom and the exiles.
Jeremiah 23:2
Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to the shepherds who tend my people: ‘Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them, I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done,’ declares the Lord.
Ezekiel 34:2
‘Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock?
Zechariah 10:3a
‘My anger burns against the shepherds,
and I will punish the leaders;
There is a consistent theme through all these warnings. The leaders were meant to look after the people, to follow God’s example of being a good shepherd, to lead them in the right way, to feed them, to give them good water. But they haven’t done that. They’ve treated them as a resource, got fat on them, fleeced them, maltreated them, led them down false paths. They have been bad shepherds.
And so they are going to be replaced. God is going to send good shepherds who will shepherd as God shepherds.
Jeremiah 23:4
I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,’ declares the Lord.
Ezekiel 34:23
I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd.
Micah 5:2&4
‘But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times.’
4 He will stand and shepherd his flock
in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
There is one final strand to pick up from the Old Testament before we head into the New Testament and see how Jesus drew all these threads together. This strand is one that focuses on why people need a shepherd in the first place.
Psalm 119:176
I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not forgotten your commands.
Isaiah 53:6
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
We might object to being characterised as sheep, it’s not very flattering, is it? But the reality is, however sorted and self-sufficient we think we are, however good we think we can be on our own, however much we believe we can provide for ourselves, we all still have some sheep like tendencies. Even those of us who have some shepherding responsibilities. We all go astray and go our own way. We all need a shepherd to bring us back.
Which leads us on to Jesus as the good shepherd. We will get on to look at our John passage in a moment but before we do, let’s just pick up a few other times in the gospels that draw on these ideas.
The first one comes in Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus is out and about in the towns and villages teaching and healing.
Matthew 9:36
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Notice that this isn’t Jesus talking about himself. This is his friend and follower seeing how Jesus reacted to the people around, how he loved them and cared for them, how he had compassion on them. Matthew, who would have known all those Old Testament themes and prophecies sees Jesus acting like God had promised the good shepherd he would send would act.
When we move onto Jesus’ teaching perhaps the most well known of his sheep parables is that found in Luke 15. Jesus tells the story of the shepherd who has 100 sheep. One of them gets lost, and the shepherd goes off to find it, because he doesn’t want a single one lost. This is the kind of shepherd that Jesus is. And that fills us with a nice glow, it’s comforting.
Less so is the parable that Jesus tells in Matthew 25, where we find him as shepherd dividing the sheep and the goats, judging between those who have helped and comforted his followers, and those who have ignored and shunned them.
And so we come to Jesus’ claim to be the good shepherd that we read this evening in John’s gospel. This claim is made in the middle of a longer conversation with the religious leaders, the Pharisees. In this debate Jesus is clearly drawing on the distinction between the good shepherds and the bad shepherds in the Old Testament, casting them as the bad shepherds and himself as the good shepherd, the one who fulfils the promises of God to send a Good Shepherd and to be the Good Shepherd.
Jesus is both human and divine so he, in himself, fulfils both God’s promises to be the Good Shepherd and to send the perfect David, the perfect human Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep that they might be found, come home, and live, in the care of the Good Shepherd, Jesus – God and Man.
As John went on to write in Revelation.
Revelation 7:17
For the Lamb at the centre of the throne
will be their shepherd;
“he will lead them to springs of living water.”
“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”’
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