When I was in college I had a friend by the name of Lynne, who farmed with his father north of Champaign. They grew the usual central Illinois crops of corn and soy beans, but unlike most central Illinois farmers, they also raised sheep. Actually, they made a pretty hefty extra income by raising sheep, especially in years when the crop prices or yields weren’t so good. But Lynne hated those sheep. I can remember him saying that there are three levels of stupidity in this world. There’s dumb. There’s dumber. And then there’s sheep. I also remember him saying that if someone says that sheep are as dumb as a brick, they are actually insulting the brick!
Now I have to admit that perhaps other than at a petting zoo with our children when they were young, I’ve never actually been around sheep. I can’t speak for the presumed stupidity of sheep from my own experience. So I turned to our friend the internet, and it didn’t take me long to understand why my friend Lynne said those things about sheep.
For example:
- Sheep spend their days eating grass. Hour after hour after hour eating grass. Eating is pretty much all that they do. It sounds very peaceful, doesn’t it? But this constant eating creates problems. For starters, when sheep show up to eat – especially in past times when they would move from one pasture to another – they eat everything. When they leave, there’s no grass left. This caused a lot of problems in the days of the “old west,” because when sheep came through an area, they left nothing – absolutely nothing – for grazing cattle to eat. Not only that, but sheep are so focused on their eating that they don’t see what the other sheep are doing – and they can easily stray away from the flock. Sheep also can’t digest all the grass they’ve eaten until they lie down – but they don’t always lie down on their own. So the shepherd sometimes has to make them lie down for their own good.
- Psalm 23 that we read a few minutes ago mentions sheep being led beside the still waters – and those words are very important if you’re a shepherd. If sheep fall into moving water, they can drown. Their coats are already heavy, and their wool rapidly absorbs water. And they can’t swim. The end result is that sheep actually fear moving water and are reluctant to drink from a lake or stream unless the water is still.
- Sheep are born followers. Stories are told about a sheep falling off of a cliff and the rest of the sheep follow right off that same cliff.
- Sheep are helpless against predators. In Biblical times, predators such as lions, wolves, panthers, leopards, bears and hyenas were common in the countryside of Israel. Before he became King David, the shepherd boy David defended his sheep from lions and bears. The problem is that if some kind of predator finds a flock of sheep, the sheep don’t fight back. They don’t try to defend themselves. They don’t try to spread out or run or get away. Instead, they huddle together – giving the predator a nice, big, easy target.
- Under certain circumstances, a sheep can get turned over on its back and is not able to get back up. This can actually be fatal! Many of a sheep’s vital bodily functions depend on gravity. When a sheep is turned over on its back, the blood drains out of the legs, the stomach can’t digest food, and breathing is blocked. If the shepherd doesn’t act quickly, the sheep will die.
- My friend Lynn told me about the time that he had taken some large bulk containers, cut them in half and set them up in the pasture so that the sheep could have some shelter. But what soon happened is that one of the ornery rams got inside one of the shelters and began to butt it around the pasture. The ram kept butting the shelter around until he pushed it hard against a fence. Then the ram was trapped inside – and couldn’t figure how to get out.
Yes, there’s dumb, there’s dumber, and there’s sheep. If you are a shepherd, sheep can be nothing more than one problem after another.
But do you want to know what is the real – the ultimate – problem with sheep? The real problem is – we are the sheep! As Isaiah wrote: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - -every one – to his own way.” We spend all of our days looking downward, gorging ourselves on the sin of this world. If we fall into the moving waters of sin – something that can’t help but happen to every man, woman and child ever born on this earth and ever to be born on this earth – we will drown. We follow the paths of this world, the paths of evil, and fall over the cliffs that lead us into the depths of hell. We are helpless – absolutely helpless – to defend ourselves from the great predator Satan and all of his demons who threaten to attack and consume us by the same evil that consumes them. When Satan turns us on our backs – when sin leads us to that place where we cannot turn over and turn away – we suffocate and die. When sin surrounds us, we – just like sheep – can’t find our way out on our own.
Jesus often refers to people – to us – as sheep. In John 21, Jesus tells Simon Peter to feed His sheep. In Matthew chapter 9 and Mark chapter 6, Jesus says that He had compassion on the crowds that followed Him because they were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” But when Jesus compares us to sheep, He’s not exactly giving us a compliment. He’s saying that we are helpless, we are stupid, we are stubborn, we are disagreeable. We need constant supervision. Because a sheep without a shepherd can not take care of itself. A sheep without a good shepherd will die.
But that’s the wonder – the absolute, totally magnificent wonder – of God’s love. Even before the creation of the world, God knew that His beloved creation – mankind formed by His loving hands and formed in His perfect image – would sin. He knew that after mankind sinned, His people would be no more than helpless, pitiful, dumb sheep. But that didn’t stop Him from loving us. That never stopped Him from being our Shepherd.
God the Father sent God the Son to be our Good Shepherd, to lay down His life for you and me and every one of His helpless – and otherwise hopeless – sheep. Our Good Shepherd knows that we could not live without Him, so He did all of the work! He assured our lives with His holy life, His innocent suffering, His sacrificial death and His resurrection from the grave. As we heard in tonight’s reading from Isaiah 53, “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
We are His lambs, because he has bought us at a heavy price – the price of His own precious life. He is the one who knows His sheep, who calls us by name as the Holy Spirit brings us to faith through His Word. He is the Good Shepherd who lovingly feeds us through His Sacraments. He is the one who gives us forgiveness of sins through the cleansing waters of Baptism and Christ’s own body and blood that we receive in the Lord’s Supper.
A famous actor was a guest of honor at a large gathering where he received many requests to recite favorite excerpts from various literary works. An elderly pastor who was in the audience asked the actor to recite the 23rd Psalm. The actor agreed – but only on the condition that that pastor would also recite it.
The actor went first, and his recitation was everything that you might expect – it was beautifully intoned, with great dramatic emphasis added to the words. When he was done, he received a thunderous round of applause.
The elderly pastor went next. Age had taken a toll on his voice, and his diction was anything but polished. But when he finished there was not a dry eye in the room. When someone asked the actor what made the difference, he replied: “I know the Psalm, but he knows the Shepherd.”
My friends in Christ, all of us, like sheep, have gone astray in our sinful lives. But our Good Shepherd has graciously and lovingly led us into the fold of His salvation. Our Good Shepherd calls each of us by name and leads us through life toward heaven’s perfect pasture. We recognize and – by the grace of God – we respond to His voice.
He leads us in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. He brings us to green pastures and restores our souls. Thanks be to God, we not only know the Psalm – but we know the Shepherd, too.
Return to Pastor page
