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The people of God are the sheep of His pasture. No one but the Lord can perfectly lead and care for His sheep. The Lord’s outstanding shepherding of those who find shelter in His shadow issues from His essential (intrinsic) attributes, from His holy character, which is reflected in His works and shines as light for the sheep of His pasture. No man therefore can shepherd another the way God does, for all men are essentially corrupt. Human history and the current state of affairs in our realm attest that men are incapable of perfectly leading and caring for their fellow men. Israel’s story appears in the Bible as a typical example; it conveys man’s inability to perfectly assume the role of a shepherd.
Throughout Israel’s history, there arose many shepherds who were to lead and care for the people of God; but there was none who perfectly assumed his duty. The shepherds of Israel, both political and religious, were not always faithful to the LORD their God. In fact, among the multitude, only a handful served the Lord and honored His name, but not perfectly. Many gave themselves up to evil and set themselves against the Lord. They were godless and wicked, treacherous and heartless, oppressing the poor and the weak among the people. With their idols they turned the hearts of the people away from the Lord their God. Although they were responsible to lead the people to their God and ensure their spiritual welfare and devotion to their God, they instead led them into idolatry and they broke fellowship with the LORD. Led astray, they followed the way of wickedness. And as a result of their spiritual harlotry, the people were scattered abroad like lost sheep and abandoned to the wild beasts.
The false shepherds of Israel failed to properly shepherd God’s people and angered Him with their detestable practices and heartlessness toward His flock. And so the Lord resolved to rescue His sheep from their mouths; He promised by the mouth of His prophets that He would deliver His sheep and restore them to safety and health.
In the days of Ezekiel, the Word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, saying, “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them” (Ezekiel 34:1-6).
Vv. 7-10, “Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely because My sheep have become a prey, and My sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because My shepherds have not searched for My sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed My sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will seek My flock from their hand and make them cease from shepherding the flock. So the shepherds will not shepherd themselves anymore, but I will deliver My flock from their mouth so that they will not be food for them.”
Vv. 11-16, “For thus says Lord Yahweh, “Behold, I Myself will seek My sheep and care for them. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his sheep which are spread out, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land; and I will shepherd them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the inhabited places of the land. I will shepherd them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and be shepherded in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will shepherd My flock, and I will make them lie down,” declares Lord Yahweh. “I will search for the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken, and strengthen the sick; but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd them with judgment.” V. 23, “And I will set up over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.”
So in the face of the leaders’ failure to properly shepherd His flock, the LORD promised to raise up for His flock one shepherd like His servant David, who would come and feed His flock and be their Shepherd.
Jeremiah declares in Jeremiah 23:1-6, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” declares the LORD. Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for My people: “You have scattered My flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the LORD. Then I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the LORD. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He shall reign as King and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The LORD our righteousness.’”
Like Ezekiel, Jeremiah promised that the LORD God would raise up a good shepherd for His flock. About this Promised Shepherd, Micah also writes in Micah 5:4-5a, “And He shall stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD His God. And they shall dwell secure, for now He shall be great to the ends of the earth. And He shall be their peace.”
All these OT prophecies point to Christ in Whom all the promises of God to His people find their Yes. Paul writes to the believers at Corinth, “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in Him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our Amen to God for His glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us” (2 Corinthians 1:18-21).
God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, is the Promised Shepherd of Whom the prophets of old spoke. And He is distinct from all other shepherds, not only by His nature, but also by His works. Unlike the false shepherds, who heartlessly shepherded the flock of God, the Promised Shepherd is a righteous Branch. He will do justice and righteousness and bring salvation and peace to God’s people. In the words already quoted, the Father Himself bears witness about the uniqueness of His Promised Shepherd, when He says, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He shall reign as King and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The LORD our righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).
Undoubtedly, embedded in these verses is also the affirmation of the Branch’s identicalness, His oneness in essence with the LORD who makes the promise. In other words, They both have the same essence. For thus says the LORD about the Branch, “He will be called, ‘The LORD our righteousness” (cf. Isaiah 7:14). That the Branch is one in essence with the LORD is beyond dispute; for the Branch bears the same name, “LORD” – God’s personal name, which depicts the uniqueness of God’s essence and relates to God’s everlasting self-existence, self-sufficiency, independence and unchangeableness. This tells us that the Branch, unlike the false shepherds of Israel, is not only a man, but He is also God. He will be called by God’s personal name, “The LORD”, because He is one in essence with the LORD who sends Him; He is God. In other words, the Branch and He who sends Him are one.
Therefore, when the LORD makes the promise in Ezekiel’s prophecy, He says that He Himself will take over the shepherding of His people. Thus, He who makes the promise and the Branch who will fulfill it, though distinct in person, are one and inseparable. It is clear that a person cannot send himself, and we know that there is only one God, who eternally exists in three distinct yet coequal and consubstantial Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, the One who gives the promise is the Father. He promised that He would send His Son, the Branch, who is His exact likeness, His coequal and consubstantial, to shepherd His flock. The language of Jeremiah 23:5-6 recalls God’s words to Israel in the wilderness at Sinai.
When the Lord rescued Israel from the furnace of Egypt, He said to Israel at Mount Sinai, “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for My name is in him. “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. “When My angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.” (Exodus 23:20-24).
Here also the LORD who is speaking makes it clear that His Angel, who will go before the people and lead them to the land that the LORD has prepared for them, is one with the LORD Himself by virtue of the authority He has to forgive sin. Only God has the authority to forgive sin. Furthermore, the LORD who speaks stresses that His own name is in His Angel who will go before the people. Thus the Angel of the LORD is identified with the LORD, for the LORD’s name is in Him and He has the authority to forgive sin. These unique characteristics make it clear that the LORD who is speaking is referring to a person who is coequal and consubstantial with Him, i.e., a person of the same substance or essence as Him, in this case the second Person of the Trinity, the preincarnate Son of God. Therefore Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:1-4, “For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”
In the days of old, God the Son was sent by His Father to lead Israel and to take them to the Promised Land after their deliverance from slavery to Egypt. But in these last days, He came in the flesh (the Word became flesh) to rescue God’s people from slavery to sin and to take them to the holy City, the heavenly Jerusalem.
As the Shepherd of His people, the Lord Jesus Christ is not only the vanguard that conquers the enemies of His people before them, but also the rearguard that protects them. He destroys the enemies of His people as He advances before them; He clears the way so that they may walk a safe path, and with His arm guards them against the darts of the evil one.
Christ the Lord clothed Himself in humanity and entered the world to seek and save His lost sheep. Although the gathering of the lost sheep of the house of Israel is not yet consummated, it will be fulfilled at the second coming of the Good Shepherd. He will come again to destroy His enemies and gather the scattered sheep of Jacob. About this, the prophet Isaiah declares in Isaiah 40:10-11, “Behold, the Lord GOD shall come with a strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him; behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him. He will tend His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs in His arms; He will carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.”
Israel’s shepherds were cruel, careless and self-indulgent. They led the people into spiritual harlotry and caused them to be scattered abroad. But the Chief Shepherd, the Shepherd of the sheep, the Promised Branch, is the Good Shepherd, gracious, meek, selfless, merciful, protective, truthful, righteous and compassionate. About His distinctiveness, Isaiah writes in Isaiah 11:2-5, “And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what His eyes see, or decide disputes by what His ears hear, but with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His waist, and faithfulness the belt of His loins.”
Unlike the false shepherds, the Good Shepherd surrounds His sheep with loving-kindness and keeps them like the apple of His eye. He hates wickedness and loves righteousness. He Himself affirms His distinctiveness in John 10:11, saying, “I am the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” And His sheep are not all from one fold only, i.e., the nation of Israel, but are also from other nations, the Gentiles. Therefore the Lord also declares in John 10:16, “I have other sheep, which are not from this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”
The Lord’s steadfast love for His sheep is clearly expressed throughout the Scripture. For instance, the Lord Himself declares in John 10:1-5, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”
The Lord uses the metaphor of v. 1 to decry the stealthiness and the malevolent conduct of he who does not seek the good of the sheep but their harm: he is a thief, a bandit who enters stealthily into the sheepfold, not to take care of the sheep but to steal and destroy them. Whereas in vv. 2-5 the Lord underscores the openness and goodwill of the true shepherd. He does not sneak into the sheep pen, but enters by the door and cares for his sheep. The Lord also stresses the familiarity, the intimate and reciprocal knowledge, that exists between the shepherd and his sheep – an intimate knowledge that serves as a safeguard against strangers. The loving-kindness that transpires from the picture of the true shepherd in these four verses is uniquely characteristic of the Lord, the Shepherd of the sheep.
The Lord’s loving care for His sheep issues from His distinctive character, from His essential goodness, which is reflected in His activities for(1) and relationship with(2) His sheep.
1- The Activities of the Good Shepherd
2- The Shepherd-Sheep relationship