The good Shepherd.
I. THE INFORMATION GIVEN TO US. We may ourselves be very ignorant of sheep and shepherding; and what should we know of Eastern customs? Hence it is well to study the information given in the first five verses of this chapter. We are to imagine a large fold where a great number of sheep are gathered together. At the door of the fold a man is stationed to keep guard, chiefly, as one may suppose, to prevent the entrance of unauthorized persons. For the sheep within do not constitute one flock. They are not the property of one person. The fold has been made for the common advantage. Each shepherd could not afford to make a fold for himself and employ a doorkeeper of his own. Imagine, then, some shepherd having a hundred sheep. He has been out with them all day, watching them and leading them from pasture to pasture. Then at night he brings them to the common fold and leaves them with the doorkeeper. Next morning he returns to take them out for the day; and how must he find his own amid the mixed crowd? By the simple plan of calling each sheep by name. And so the shepherd takes them out and goes in front of them till the pasture is reached. His voice is quite enough to keep them right. They will not follow a stranger, for they know not the voice of strangers.
II. JESUS CAN SAY MORE FOR THE SHEEP THAN FOR THE SHEPHERDS. He can say this of a sheep, that if a shepherd gives it a name, and then calls it by that name, it will make its way to the familiar voice, even though it be amid a large crowd of other sheep. But take a lad and entrust him with a flock of sheep. Explain to him their ways, their wants, and their perils. Still you cannot tell beforehand what sort of shepherd he will turn out. He must be tried by actual experience, and the name good or bad given to him according to the way in which he behaves.
III. JESUS THE GOOD SHEPHERD. What power there is in the word "I" when Jesus uses it! We like Jesus all the bettor when he talks about himself. We do not call him egotist. Think in how many respects men are like sheep, and need a good shepherd. In many things we can look after ourselves, but in the most important things we need to be looked after. The true shepherd will not submit to have his property scattered and lost without a determined attempt to save it. He has a special and supreme interest in the sheep because they are his sheep. Every human being has something of the sheep-nature in him. Jesus looks on every company of human beings as a fold wherein sheep of different flocks are gathered together, and he has to get his own flock out of them. We cannot do without some shepherd, and happy is it for us if we have the good shepherd. He laid down his life for the sheep, seemed to be destroyed by the wolf, but really he was engaged in its effectual destruction. He has gained for his sheep broad, even measureless lands of green pastures and still waters, where the sheep may feed at leisure without a foe and without a fear. In all those lands no ravenous beast has his haunt. Nothing shall hurt or destroy in all the holy mountain of the Lord.—Y.
The dedicated life.
That the Father loved him Jesus was constantly asserting, and here we have the reason for that love.
I. NOTICE THE GENERAL ELEMENT OF DEVOTION. Upon all self-sacrificing devotion the Father must look with a complacent eye. Because, if the spirit of devotion be in a man at all, the extent and the character of the devotion will depend upon the necessity and the claim. A few have become famous in history, not that they were more devoted than the many unnamed, but their devotion was shown on more memorable scenes. And when God looks upon his own children, from him who was peculiarly the Son of God downwards, this spirit of devotion in them is needful to give him pleasure. For behind this love of God toward his true children, there is love to the dying world, a love that can only be satisfied in proportion as that world receives eternal life. And if that world is to receive eternal life, it must be through the self-denying devotion of those who have received it already. Self-denying devotion is of the very essence of the new creature. And since Jesus stands at the very head of the new creation, we expect to find in him the noblest and most inspiring instance of this devotion.
II. NOTICE THE ELEMENTS PECULIAR TO THE DEVOTION OF JESUS. The peculiar nature and mission of Jesus have to be considered. Jesus could do by his devotion what no ordinary human being could do. He laid down his life that he might take it again. His devotion would have been useless but for this ability to take up again what had been laid down. If he had simply laid his life down, and that had been the end of it, he would have done no more than thousands had done already and thousands have done since, Natural lives have been freely given up that other natural lives might be preserved. Oftener still perhaps they have been risked. But when Jesus laid down his life, the peculiarity lay here, that he did not preserve any other natural life by doing so. Nay more, he who laid down his life made it necessary for others to lay down their lives in turn. Jesus laid down his life to make manifest the reality of eternal life.
1. It had to be made plain that Jesus did really lay down his life. We may talk of laying down our lives, but that is in spirit rather than reality, for our lives are not ours to lay down. Man's natural life may be taken from him at any time. But Jesus evidently had a control over his life which we have not. Most important is that declaration, "No man taketh it from me;" and most important, too, is that other. declaration, "I have power [or, 'authority'] to lay it down." We need ever to recollect all that was voluntary, deliberate, foreseen, and intentional in the death of Jesus. On one side that death is the most concentrated illustration of human wickedness and corruption the world has ever seen. On the other side it is not so much an illustration as a development. Jesus shows us in himself a human possibility turned into reality. It had to be made very clear to him that he might lay his life down. And it has to be made very clear to us that there was nothing suicidal or despairing about this dedication. It was the free action of the wise Jesus, taking the path of duty and love. And let it not be said there was nothing difficult in this. As a matter of history, we know there was difficulty; let Gethsemane testify to that. We should need to have the nature of Jesus ourselves to comprehend whence all his difficulties and agonies arose.—Y.