sheep

• Nodites imported

80:1.2In the east­ern trough of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean the Nod­ites had es­tab­lished one of their most ex­ten­sive cul­tures and from these cen­ters had pen­e­trated some­what into south­ern Eu­rope but more es­pe­cially into north­ern Africa. The broad-headed Nod­ite-An­don­ite Syr­i­ans very early in­tro­duced pot­tery and agri­cul­ture in con­nec­tion with their set­tle­ments on the slowly ris­ing Nile delta. They also im­ported sheep, goats, cat­tle, and other do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals and brought in greatly im­proved meth­ods of met­al­work­ing, Syria then be­ing the cen­ter of that in­dus­try.

• domesticated by 5000 B.C.

81:2.12The And­ites of Tur­kes­tan were the first peo­ples to ex­ten­sively do­mes­ti­cate the horse, and this is an­other rea­son why their cul­ture was for so long pre­dom­i­nant. By 5000 B.C. the Mes­o­po­ta­mian, Tur­kes­tan, and Chi­nese farm­ers had be­gun the rais­ing of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and ele­phants. They em­ployed as beasts of bur­den the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was him­self at one time the beast of bur­den. One ruler of the blue race once had one hun­dred thou­sand men in his colony of bur­den bear­ers.

• Egyptian tribes worshiped

95:2.3For ages the Egyp­tian peo­ples had been given to the wor­ship of na­ture gods; more par­tic­u­larly did each of the two-score sep­a­rate tribes have a spe­cial group god, one wor­ship­ing the bull, an­other the lion, a third the ram, and so on. Still ear­lier they had been totem tribes, very much like the Amerinds.

• we are s. of God’s pasture

131:2.5“The heav­ens de­clare God’s righ­teous­ness, and all the peo­ple have seen his glory. It is God who has made us, and not we our­selves; we are his peo­ple, the sheep of his pas­ture. His mercy is ev­er­last­ing, and his truth en­dures to all gen­er­a­tions. Our God is gov­er­nor among the na­tions. Let the earth be filled with his glory! O that men would praise the Lord for his good­ness and for his won­der­ful gifts to the chil­dren of men!

• we are s. of God’s pasture

131:2.7“God is our Fa­ther; the Lord is our re­deemer. God has cre­ated the uni­ver­sal hosts, and he pre­serves them all. His righ­teous­ness is like the moun­tains and his judg­ment like the great deep. He causes us to drink of the river of his plea­sures, and in his light we shall see light. It is good to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to the Most High; to show forth lov­ing-kind­ness in the morn­ing and the di­vine faith­ful­ness ev­ery night. God’s king­dom is an ev­er­last­ing king­dom, and his do­min­ion en­dures through­out all gen­er­a­tions. The Lord is my shep­herd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pas­tures; he leads me be­side still wa­ters. He re­stores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righ­teous­ness. Yes, even though I walk through the val­ley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for God is with me. Surely good­ness and mercy shall fol­low me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for­ever.

• we are s. of God’s pasture

131:4.4“With our hearts purged of all hate, let us wor­ship the Eter­nal. Our God is the Lord of prayer; he hears the cry of his chil­dren. Let all men sub­mit their wills to him, the Res­o­lute. Let us de­light in the lib­er­al­ity of the Lord of prayer. Make prayer your in­most friend and wor­ship your soul’s sup­port. ‘If you will but wor­ship me in love,’ says the Eter­nal, ‘I will give you the wis­dom to at­tain me, for my wor­ship is the virtue com­mon to all crea­tures.’ God is the il­lu­mi­na­tor of the gloomy and the power of those who are faint. Since God is our strong friend, we have no more fear. We praise the name of the never-con­quered Con­queror. We wor­ship him be­cause he is man’s faith­ful and eter­nal helper. God is our sure leader and un­fail­ing guide. He is the great par­ent of heaven and earth, pos­sessed of un­lim­ited en­ergy and in­fi­nite wis­dom. His splen­dor is sub­lime and his beauty di­vine. He is the su­preme refuge of the uni­verse and the change­less guard­ian of ev­er­last­ing law. Our God is the Lord of life and the Com­forter of all men; he is the lover of man­kind and the helper of those who are dis­tressed. He is our life giver and the Good Shep­herd of the hu­man flocks. God is our fa­ther, brother, and friend. And we long to know this God in our in­ner be­ing.

• arithmetic of shearing

133:5.5Logic is valid in the ma­te­rial world, and math­e­mat­ics is re­li­able when lim­ited in its ap­pli­ca­tion to phys­i­cal things; but nei­ther is to be re­garded as wholly de­pend­able or in­fal­li­ble when ap­plied to life prob­lems. Life em­braces phe­nom­ena which are not wholly ma­te­rial. Arith­metic says that, if one man could shear a sheep in ten min­utes, ten men could shear it in one minute. That is sound math­e­mat­ics, but it is not true, for the ten men could not so do it; they would get in one an­other’s way so badly that the work would be greatly de­layed.

• lawful to lift s. from pit on Sabbath?

148:7.2The leader of the spy­ing Phar­isees, as Je­sus stood talk­ing to the peo­ple, in­duced a man with a with­ered hand to ap­proach him and ask if it would be law­ful to be healed on the Sab­bath day or should he seek help on an­other day. When Je­sus saw the man, heard his words, and per­ceived that he had been sent by the Phar­isees, he said: “Come for­ward while I ask you a ques­tion. If you had a sheep and it should fall into a pit on the Sab­bath day, would you reach down, lay hold on it, and lift it out? Is it law­ful to do such things on the Sab­bath day?” And the man an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, it would be law­ful thus to do well on the Sab­bath day.” Then said Je­sus, speak­ing to all of them: “I know where­fore you have sent this man into my pres­ence. You would find cause for of­fense in me if you could tempt me to show mercy on the Sab­bath day. In si­lence you all agreed that it was law­ful to lift the un­for­tu­nate sheep out of the pit, even on the Sab­bath, and I call you to wit­ness that it is law­ful to ex­hibit lov­ing-kind­ness on the Sab­bath day not only to an­i­mals but also to men. How much more valu­able is a man than a sheep! I pro­claim that it is law­ful to do good to men on the Sab­bath day.” And as they all stood be­fore him in si­lence, Je­sus, ad­dress­ing the man with the with­ered hand, said: “Stand up here by my side that all may see you. And now that you may know that it is my Fa­ther’s will that you do good on the Sab­bath day, if you have the faith to be healed, I bid you stretch out your hand.”

• parable of the lost s.

159:1.2“If a kind­hearted man has a hun­dred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not im­me­di­ately leave the ninety and nine and go out in search of the one that has gone astray? And if he is a good shep­herd, will he not keep up his quest for the lost sheep un­til he finds it? And then, when the shep­herd has found his lost sheep, he lays it over his shoul­der and, go­ing home re­joic­ing, calls to his friends and neigh­bors, ‘Re­joice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ I de­clare that there is more joy in heaven over one sin­ner who re­pents than over ninety and nine righ­teous per­sons who need no re­pen­tance. Even so, it is not the will of my Fa­ther in heaven that one of these lit­tle ones should go astray, much less that they should per­ish. In your re­li­gion God may re­ceive re­pen­tant sin­ners; in the gospel of the king­dom the Fa­ther goes forth to find them even be­fore they have se­ri­ously thought of re­pen­tance.

• parable of the lost s.

159:5.16The Jews had heard of a God who would for­give re­pen­tant sin­ners and try to for­get their mis­deeds, but not un­til Je­sus came, did men hear about a God who went in search of lost sheep, who took the ini­tia­tive in look­ing for sin­ners, and who re­joiced when he found them will­ing to re­turn to the Fa­ther’s house. This pos­i­tive note in re­li­gion Je­sus ex­tended even to his prayers. And he con­verted the neg­a­tive golden rule into a pos­i­tive ad­mo­ni­tion of hu­man fair­ness.

• Jesus › his s. hear his voice

164:5.2This was mid­win­ter in Je­ru­sa­lem, and the peo­ple sought the par­tial shel­ter of Sol­o­mon’s Porch; and as Je­sus lin­gered, the crowds asked him many ques­tions, and he taught them for more than two hours. Some of the Jew­ish teach­ers sought to en­trap him by pub­licly ask­ing him: “How long will you hold us in sus­pense? If you are the Mes­siah, why do you not plainly tell us?” Said Je­sus: “I have told you about my­self and my Fa­ther many times, but you will not be­lieve me. Can you not see that the works I do in my Fa­ther’s name bear wit­ness for me? But many of you be­lieve not be­cause you be­long not to my fold. The teacher of truth at­tracts only those who hunger for the truth and who thirst for righ­teous­ness. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they fol­low me. And to all who fol­low my teach­ing I give eter­nal life; they shall never per­ish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Fa­ther, who has given me these chil­dren, is greater than all, so that no one is able to pluck them out of my Fa­ther’s hand. The Fa­ther and I are one.” Some of the un­be­liev­ing Jews rushed over to where they were still build­ing the tem­ple to pick up stones to cast at Je­sus, but the be­liev­ers re­strained them.

• Jesus › has many s. not of this fold

165:2.9“But I have many other sheep not of this fold, and these words are true not only of this world. These other sheep also hear and know my voice, and I have prom­ised the Fa­ther that they shall all be brought into one fold, one broth­er­hood of the sons of God. And then shall you all know the voice of one shep­herd, the true shep­herd, and shall all ac­knowl­edge the fa­ther­hood of God.

• Jesus › has many s. not of this fold

181:2.18“If your breth­ren de­sire to re­tain you as their coun­selor, I di­rect that you should, in all mat­ters tem­po­ral and spir­i­tual, do your ut­most to pro­mote peace and har­mony among the var­i­ous groups of sin­cere gospel be­liev­ers. Ded­i­cate the re­main­der of your life to pro­mot­ing the prac­ti­cal as­pects of broth­erly love among your breth­ren. Be kind to my broth­ers in the flesh when they come fully to be­lieve this gospel; man­i­fest lov­ing and im­par­tial de­vo­tion to the Greeks in the West and to Ab­ner in the East. Al­though these, my apos­tles, are soon go­ing to be scat­tered to the four cor­ners of the earth, there to pro­claim the good news of the sal­va­tion of son­ship with God, you are to hold them to­gether dur­ing the try­ing time just ahead, that sea­son of in­tense test­ing dur­ing which you must learn to be­lieve this gospel with­out my per­sonal pres­ence while you pa­tiently await the ar­rival of the new teacher, the Spirit of Truth. And so, An­drew, though it may not fall to you to do the great works as seen by men, be con­tent to be the teacher and coun­selor of those who do such things. Go on with your work on earth to the end, and then shall you con­tinue this min­istry in the eter­nal king­dom, for have I not many times told you that I have other sheep not of this flock?”

• scatter when shepherd smitten

181:2.27Then the Mas­ter went over to Si­mon Pe­ter, who stood up as Je­sus ad­dressed him: “Pe­ter, I know you love me, and that you will ded­i­cate your life to the pub­lic procla­ma­tion of this gospel of the king­dom to Jew and gen­tile, but I am dis­tressed that your years of such close as­so­ci­a­tion with me have not done more to help you think be­fore you speak. What ex­pe­ri­ence must you pass through be­fore you will learn to set a guard upon your lips? How much trou­ble have you made for us by your thought­less speak­ing, by your pre­sump­tu­ous self-con­fi­dence! And you are des­tined to make much more trou­ble for your­self if you do not mas­ter this frailty. You know that your breth­ren love you in spite of this weak­ness, and you should also un­der­stand that this short­com­ing in no way im­pairs my af­fec­tion for you, but it lessens your use­ful­ness and never ceases to make trou­ble for you. But you will un­doubt­edly re­ceive great help from the ex­pe­ri­ence you will pass through this very night. And what I now say to you, Si­mon Pe­ter, I like­wise say to all your breth­ren here as­sem­bled: This night you will all be in great dan­ger of stum­bling over me. You know it is writ­ten, ‘The shep­herd will be smit­ten and the sheep will be scat­tered abroad.’ When I am ab­sent, there is great dan­ger that some of you will suc­cumb to doubts and stum­ble be­cause of what be­falls me. But I prom­ise you now that I will come back to you for a lit­tle while, and that I will then go be­fore you into Gal­i­lee.”

• scatter when shepherd smitten

183:4.6Surely, the shep­herd is smit­ten and the sheep are scat­tered! While they all vaguely re­al­ize that Je­sus has fore­warned them of this very sit­u­a­tion, they are too severely shocked by the Mas­ter’s sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance to be able to use their minds nor­mally.

• Jesus › told Peter to feed his s.

192:2.3Af­ter they had walked along a lit­tle far­ther, the Mas­ter turned to Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you re­ally love me?” And then said Si­mon, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And again said Je­sus: “Then take good care of my sheep. Be a good and a true shep­herd to the flock. Be­tray not their con­fi­dence in you. Be not taken by sur­prise at the en­emy’s hand. Be on guard at all times—watch and pray.”