JESUS the Good Shepherd 

Shepherding is the most honored secular profession of the entire Old Testament era. Sheep and shepherds are referred to in the Bible more than five hundred times. Along with tending gardens and farming, it is one of the world’s oldest professions. Abel was a keeper of sheep, and he offered to God of the firstlings of the flock (Genesis 4:2–4). The Hebrew founding fathers—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—were all shepherds. When Jacob’s small family migrated to Egypt, they described their occupation: “Your servants are shepherds, both we and also our fathers” (Genesis 47:3). David, Israel’s favorite king, was first a shepherd of his father’s sheep (1 Samuel 16:11). The most beloved chapter of the Bible is the Shepherd’s Psalm, which compares the relationship between a man and his God to that of a sheep and his shepherd (Psalm 23). This figure is used often in the Old Testament (Psalm 74:1; 77:20; 78:52; 79:13; 80:1; Isaiah 40:11; Jeremiah 31:10; Ezekiel 34:12–15; Micah 7:14). God even pictured Himself as Israel’s Shepherd (Psalm 100:3). Needless to say, no one Allen Webster would have been surprised if the Messiah had come in the guise of a shepherd. But Jesus’ hand never held a sheep herd’s crook, so far as we know. He never counted and recounted sheep as they passed under His rod at sunset. He never crinkled His nose at the pungent sheep smell on a hot Jerusalem day, nor did He strain His eye to see if that was a wandering sheep far down the hillside. He never chased away a bear nor took a lion by the beard, as David did when his little lambs were threatened (cf. 1 Samuel 17:34–35). THE SHEPHERD’S TEACHING Still, Jesus knew about sheep and often talked of them. He made these remark able statements that are filled with sheep fold rhetoric: • “I am the door of the sheep” (John 10:7). • “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture” (10:9). • “I am the good shepherd” (10:11). • “The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep” (10:11). • “I am the good shepherd; and I know 1 www.housetohouse.com THE SHEPHERD’S SHEEP My sheep, and am known by My own” (10:14). • “As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep” (10:15). • “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd” (10:16). • “When the Son of Man comes in His glory . . . All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left” (Matthew 25:31–33).   

(Allen Webster, House to House)