Shepherds of the flock
The fact is that when God called Abraham, Moses and David they were all shepherds. They looked after sheep!
Jesus didn’t say, ‘I am the good apostle,’ or ‘the good prophet,’ or even ‘the good evangelist,’ but happily claimed to be the Good Shepherd, and even our unsaved neighbours have a fondness for the 23rd Psalm. Recently I was struck by the ongoing role of the shepherd revealed in the book of Revelation. ‘…the Lamb in the centre of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them to springs of the water of life…’ (Rev. 7:17). So the shepherd’s function continues into glory.
Indeed the relationship of shepherd and the flock gives us a fundamental revelation of the relationship between God and His people. God is revealed in Scripture as the ultimate shepherd and Israel’s journey through the wilderness provides the archetypal model of that relationship. Referring to events on that desert journey, Paul writes to the young, predominantly gentile, church at Corinth, ‘These things happened to them as an example and they were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come’ (1 Cor. 10:11).
God was their shepherd. His presence was essential. Without it they refused to advance. His protection made them unique and unassailable. His provision met their every need in wilderness conditions every day through 40 years. His guidance meant that they were being purposefully led to a promised land.
God’s under-shepherds
Although the Lord was their ultimate shepherd, it is clear that God actually enlisted men to fulfil the shepherding role on His behalf. So Psalm 77:20 records, ‘You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses…’ Moses was the extension of God’s rule. Moses held the rod over the Red Sea and hit the rock to release water.
In Psalm 78 we see the shepherd role of Moses is later replaced by David, whom we are told, God took from the sheepfolds from the care of the ewes and sucking lambs and brought to shepherd Jacob His people. So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart and guided them with skilful hands (Ps. 78:52-53).
Once Moses fed the flock by giving them the law. David gave them the songs of Zion and through his inspired psalms fed them with phenomenal awareness and insight about God, His covenant commitment to them and the uniqueness of their relationship to Him. From that time on David is seen as the model shepherd king, prefiguring a great shepherd king who would one day sit on David’s throne.
His throne would be established permanently. One day a descendent of David would come as the perfect shepherd king and rule God’s kingdom in righteousness and peace. But we are told that the king won’t rule alone; under-shepherds are also anticipated. Princes will rule justly, each providing shelter from the storm and streams of water in a dry country (see Isa. 32:1, 2).
In the fullness of time the ultimate model shepherd arrives, trains his disciples and sends them to make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all that he has commanded them.
As the apostles go, their intuitive strategy in obeying the command was to plant churches, establish flocks and appoint shepherds to care for them.
Just as David was anointed by the Holy Spirit for his sacred task, so Paul reminds the Ephesian elders that the Holy Spirit made them overseers, to shepherd the church of God… (Acts 20:28). The goal was to invade pagan cultures and establish God’s flock, living under his rule and care.
Jesus
Jesus, the model shepherd, trained his disciples and sent them to make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all that he had commanded them. As the apostles went, their intuitive strategy in obeying the great commission was to plant churches, establish flocks and appoint shepherds to care for them who would establish them in truth.
In the first century this implied bringing about a massive turnabout in people’s thinking and lifestyles. Their world view was in stark contrast to the gospel’s Jewish roots. Embracing many gods or idols, they were notorious for their gross immorality.
The message could not consist of a simple ‘come back to God’ call. Old Testament prophets had often pleaded with Israel to return to their God but they worked from an accepted foundation of common history and the foundational place of the law. New Testament shepherds had no such common ground when encountering the Greek and Roman world. In the 21st century we now face similar challenges.
When Billy Graham came to the UK in the 1950s and ‘60s, the call to return to God would have been generally comprehended by that generation. Today we live in a different era and though people can be born again through encountering the simplest message, we must not assume that initial conversion will result in inevitable Christian maturity, or even basic understanding of Christian living.
Deconstructing people’s world view
The role of the modern shepherd includes a call to deconstruct people’s previous world view. Nothing can be taken for granted. Lives need to be re-formed. Coming from a fragmented and aimless society devoid of any trace of Christian values, people need to be re-socialised and taught how to relate in godly ways.
Raised on self-indulgence, consumerism and rampant individualism, the new convert won’t automatically be transformed into a mature Christian who knows how to conduct himself in the household of God (1 Tim. 3:15).
God has promised to give His people shepherds after His own heart who will feed them with knowledge and understanding (Jer. 3:15). This feeding requires a radical approach. We are not called to build on a false foundation with teachings that imply merely personal fulfilment or the grasping of the individual’s full potential, or how to love oneself. The shelves of many a Christian bookshop are filled with titles which appeal to personal fulfilment as the goal of the Christian life. Coming from a culture where demanding your personal rights seems to be the bottom line, new Christians hardly need that diet.
Building a contrasting culture
Shepherds after God’s own heart will have a different goal. They understand the identity of God’s flock and their aim will be to build a contrasting culture, an alternative community.
Paul thanks God that though his hearers were once slaves to sin they ‘became obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which they were committed’ (Rom. 6:17). His choice of words implies that they were now poured into a new mould and reshaped by truth.
Again, Paul speaks of a ‘standard of sound words’ (2 Tim. 1:13). The word ‘sound’ has a medical root and implies ‘healthy’. We get our word ‘hygienic’ from the original Greek word. False teaching, Paul says, ‘spreads like gangrene’ (2 Tim. 2:17). We have been entrusted with a glorious gospel (1 Tim. 1:11) and must make sure that we are feeding the flock with authentic food and thereby proving trustworthy! |
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