Spreading the News of the Good Shepherd
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11)
This verse follows on the heels of Jesus’s words that he is the door of the sheep. He takes his analogy further by saying that he is the good shepherd. What a contrast to the false shepherds who have no concern for the sheep! They are like the thieves and robbers who come to steal and kill. They are the ones who deceive and devour, lurking about for those sheep who can be easily devoured. They bring their idolatrous notions about worship and truth, claiming that Jesus was just a man like any other man. Their claims keep the sheep in slavery until someone can bring them the news of the good shepherd.
Joshua Project reports that roughly 3.4 billion people are members of unreached people groups. This is out of the 8 billion people living on the earth today. How many will die tonight and slip into eternity without hope, without Christ? As the good shepherd of his church, Jesus provides spiritual food and water, nurtures each member by faith through his Spirit, his Word, and his sacraments. He takes gentle care of the young and the weak, comforting when any grieve, assuring of forgiveness when any repent, giving courage when any are afraid. Even when one strays, Jesus searches for and finds the straying sheep to bring him or her back. Through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus demonstrates his knowledge of each of his sheep. Jesus said, “I know my own and my own know me” (verse 14). Earlier he described it this way: “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (verse 4). Since Christ loves each sheep and because he called each one, they know him intimately, like a close friend, because that is what he is—that and much more.
Through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, his sheep respond in faith to the shepherd’s call. By faith they hear his voice. By faith they discern his body and blood. By faith they are nourished by Jesus. The highest point of this analogy comes when Jesus says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (verse 11). We can see how Jesus’s life and love give life to us, his sheep. As Matthew Henry says, “He came to put life into the flock, the church in general, which had seemed rather like a valley full of dry bones than like a pasture covered over with flocks. Christ came to vindicate divine truths, to purify divine ordinances, to redress grievances, and to revive dying zeal, to seek those of his flock that were lost, to bind up that which was broken (Ezekiel 34:16), and this to his church is as life from the dead.”
Christ’s giving of his life also has a deeper, profound meaning; that he would literally lay down his life for us on the cross. This refers to the substitutionary atonement, which is exactly what was needed to secure our salvation. Nothing else will do. God promised to save his people and swore an oath by his own life. He had promised as much when he covenanted with Abraham. God himself passed through the parts of the sacrificed animals, swearing by his own life to keep his promise. So when Jesus came, he came with the mission of fulfilling that promise. He came knowing that he would give his life for his sheep.
Through the Lord’s Supper, each of Jesus’s people can celebrate this great act of atonement. But how will the 3.8 billion unreached people of the world hear the voice of the Good Shepherd? How will they enjoy the celebration of the Lord’s Supper? Praise God, he sends his words of truth and hope via people with “beautiful feet” (Romans 10:15). Once the unreached hear about the Good Shepherd and listen to his message by faith, they’ll become part of Jesus’s one flock. (verse 16). He’ll know each one by name, and they’ll be part of his church, just as we are.
Are you one of those with “beautiful feet?” Are you ready to take the voice of the Good Shepherd to the unreached people of the world? Are you willing to help send the voice of Jesus to the unreached of the world via people with “beautiful feet”? Will you pray for both those who go and those who send?
Adapted by Elizabeth N. from a bulletin insert for Stillwater RP Church by Rev. Bruce Parnell