shepherd

• 23rd Psalm whispered to s. boy

48:6.20That is the story whis­pered in the night sea­son to the shep­herd boy. He could not re­tain it word for word, but to the best of his mem­ory he gave it much as it is re­corded to­day.

• Lord is my s.

84:3.2The scant cour­tesy paid wom­ankind dur­ing the Old Tes­ta­ment era is a true re­flec­tion of the mores of the herds­men. The He­brew pa­tri­archs were all herds­men, as is wit­nessed by the say­ing, “The Lord is my Shep­herd.”

• God feeds his flock like a

97:7.8Lis­ten again to the gospel of this new rev­e­la­tion of the God of Salem: “He shall feed his flock like a shep­herd; he shall gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bo­som. He gives power to the faint, and to those who have no might he in­creases strength. Those who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings as ea­gles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

• 23rd Psalm whispered to s. boy

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.

135:3.1Along the val­ley of this lit­tle brook John built no less than a dozen stone shel­ters and night cor­rals, con­sist­ing of piled-up stones, wherein he could watch over and safe­guard his herds of sheep and goats. John’s life as a shep­herd af­forded him a great deal of time for thought. He talked much with Ezda, an or­phan lad of Beth-zur, whom he had in a way adopted, and who cared for the herds when he made trips to He­bron to see his mother and to sell sheep, as well as when he went down to En­gedi for Sab­bath ser­vices. John and the lad lived very sim­ply, sub­sist­ing on mut­ton, goat’s milk, wild honey, and the ed­i­ble lo­custs of that re­gion. This, their reg­u­lar diet, was sup­ple­mented by pro­vi­sions brought from He­bron and En­gedi from time to time.

135:3.2Eliz­a­beth kept John posted about Pales­tinian and world af­fairs, and his con­vic­tion grew deeper and deeper that the time was fast ap­proach­ing when the old or­der was to end; that he was to be­come the her­ald of the ap­proach of a new age, “the king­dom of heaven.” This rugged shep­herd was very par­tial to the writ­ings of the Prophet Daniel. He read a thou­sand times Daniel’s de­scrip­tion of the great im­age, which Zach­a­rias had told him rep­re­sented the his­tory of the great king­doms of the world, be­gin­ning with Baby­lon, then Per­sia, Greece, and fi­nally Rome. John per­ceived that al­ready was Rome com­posed of such poly­glot peo­ples and races that it could never be­come a strongly ce­mented and firmly con­sol­i­dated em­pire. He be­lieved that Rome was even then di­vided, as Syria, Egypt, Pales­tine, and other prov­inces; and then he fur­ther read “in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a king­dom which shall never be de­stroyed. And this king­dom shall not be left to other peo­ple but shall break in pieces and con­sume all these king­doms, and it shall stand for­ever.” “And there was given him do­min­ion and glory and a king­dom that all peo­ples, na­tions, and lan­guages should serve him. His do­min­ion is an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion, which shall not pass away, and his king­dom never shall be de­stroyed.” “And the king­dom and do­min­ion and the great­ness of the king­dom un­der the whole heaven shall be given to the peo­ple of the saints of the Most High, whose king­dom is an ev­er­last­ing king­dom, and all do­min­ions shall serve and obey him.”

135:3.3John was never able com­pletely to rise above the con­fu­sion pro­duced by what he had heard from his par­ents con­cern­ing Je­sus and by these pas­sages which he read in the Scrip­tures. In Daniel he read: “I saw in the night vi­sions, and, be­hold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and there was given him do­min­ion and glory and a king­dom.” But these words of the prophet did not har­mo­nize with what his par­ents had taught him. Nei­ther did his talk with Je­sus, at the time of his visit when he was eigh­teen years old, cor­re­spond with these state­ments of the Scrip­tures. Not­with­stand­ing this con­fu­sion, through­out all of his per­plex­ity his mother as­sured him that his dis­tant cousin, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, was the true Mes­siah, that he had come to sit on the throne of David, and that he (John) was to be­come his ad­vance her­ald and chief sup­port.

135:3.4From all John heard of the vice and wicked­ness of Rome and the dis­so­lute­ness and moral bar­ren­ness of the em­pire, from what he knew of the evil do­ings of Herod An­tipas and the gov­er­nors of Judea, he was minded to be­lieve that the end of the age was im­pend­ing. It seemed to this rugged and no­ble child of na­ture that the world was ripe for the end of the age of man and the dawn of the new and di­vine age—the king­dom of heaven. The feel­ing grew in John’s heart that he was to be the last of the old proph­ets and the first of the new. And he fairly vi­brated with the mount­ing im­pulse to go forth and pro­claim to all men: “Re­pent! Get right with God! Get ready for the end; pre­pare your­selves for the ap­pear­ance of the new and eter­nal or­der of earth af­fairs, the king­dom of heaven.”

• parable of the good 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.

• sheep know voice of true

165:2.4“The true shep­herd gath­ers his flock into the fold for the night in times of dan­ger. And when the morn­ing has come, he en­ters into the fold by the door, and when he calls, the sheep know his voice. Ev­ery shep­herd who gains en­trance to the sheep­fold by any other means than by the door is a thief and a rob­ber. The true shep­herd en­ters the fold af­ter the porter has opened the door for him, and his sheep, know­ing his voice, come out at his word; and when they that are his are thus brought forth, the true shep­herd goes be­fore them; he leads the way and the sheep fol­low him. His sheep fol­low him be­cause they know his voice; they will not fol­low a stranger. They will flee from the stranger be­cause they know not his voice. This mul­ti­tude which is gath­ered about us here are like sheep with­out a shep­herd, but when we speak to them, they know the shep­herd’s voice, and they fol­low af­ter us; at least, those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness do. Some of you are not of my fold; you know not my voice, and you do not fol­low me. And be­cause you are false shep­herds, the sheep know not your voice and will not fol­low you.”

• 23rd Psalm whispered to s. boy
• true s. must feed flock with good food

165:2.6“You who would be the un­der­shep­herds of my Fa­ther’s flocks must not only be wor­thy lead­ers, but you must also feed the flock with good food; you are not true shep­herds un­less you lead your flocks into green pas­tures and be­side still wa­ters.

• Sons are Father’s true shepherds

169:1.15Je­sus was very par­tial to telling these three sto­ries at the same time. He pre­sented the story of the lost sheep to show that, when men un­in­ten­tion­ally stray away from the path of life, the Fa­ther is mind­ful of such lost ones and goes out, with his Sons, the true shep­herds of the flock, to seek the lost sheep. He then would re­cite the story of the coin lost in the house to il­lus­trate how thor­ough is the di­vine search­ing for all who are con­fused, con­founded, or oth­er­wise spir­i­tu­ally blinded by the ma­te­rial cares and ac­cu­mu­la­tions of life. And then he would launch forth into the telling of this para­ble of the lost son, the re­cep­tion of the re­turn­ing prodi­gal, to show how com­plete is the restora­tion of the lost son into his Fa­ther’s house and heart.

• sheep scatter when s. is 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.”

• sheep scatter when s. is 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 be a good

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.”

192:2.4When they had gone a few steps far­ther, Je­sus turned to Pe­ter and, for the third time, asked, “Pe­ter, do you truly love me?” And then Pe­ter, be­ing slightly grieved at the Mas­ter’s seem­ing dis­trust of him, said with con­sid­er­able feel­ing, “Lord, you know all things, and there­fore do you know that I re­ally and truly love you.” Then said Je­sus: “Feed my sheep. Do not for­sake the flock. Be an ex­am­ple and an in­spi­ra­tion to all your fel­low shep­herds. Love the flock as I have loved you and de­vote your­self to their wel­fare even as I have de­voted my life to your wel­fare. And fol­low af­ter me even to the end.”