God Has a Shepherd’s Heart, part 2

The God of peace, . . . through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep.
–Hebrews 13:20

Some six hundred years later, Jesus stood near the place where David composed
his Shepherd Song and said with quiet assurance,

I [myself] am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down
his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns
the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep
and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The
man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the
sheep.

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know
me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay
down my life for the sheep (John 10:11–15).

This is our Lord Jesus, “that great Shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews
13:20).

He was one with the Father: He too saw us as “sheep without a shepherd.”
He “came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). He’s the one who
left the “ninety-nine on the hills” and went “to look for the one [sheep] that
wandered away,” forever establishing the value of one person and the Father’s
desire that not one of them should be lost (Matthew 18:12–14).

But there’s more: The Good Shepherd laid down His life for the sheep. The
Father issued the decree:

Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who is close to me! . . .
Strike the shepherd . . . (Zechariah 13:7).

And the Shepherd was slain.

Since the beginning of time, religions have decreed that a lamb should
give up its life for the shepherd. The shepherd would bring his lamb to the
sanctuary, lean with all his weight on the lamb’s head, and confess his sin.
The lamb would be slain, and its blood would flow out—a life for a life.
What irony: Now the shepherd gives up His life for His lamb.

He was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:5–6).

The story is about the death of God. “He himself bore our sins in his
body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by
his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). He died for all sin—the
obvious sins of murder, adultery, and theft as well as for the secret sins of
selfishness and pride. He himself bore our sins in His body on the cross. This
was sin’s final cure.

The normal way of looking at the cross is to say that man was so bad and
God was so mad that someone had to pay. But it was not anger that led Christ
to be crucified; it was love. The crucifixion is the point of the story: God
loves us so much that He himself took on our guilt. He internalized all our
sin and healed it. When it was over He said, “It is finished!” There is nothing
left for us to do but to enter into forgiving acceptance—and for those of us
who have already entered it, to enter into more of it.

“But,” you say, “why would He want me? He knows my sin, my wandering.
I’m not good enough. I’m not sorry enough for my sin. I’m unable not to sin.”

Our waywardness doesn’t have to be explained to God. He’s never surprised
by anything we do. He sees everything at a single glance—what is,
what could have been, what would have been apart from our sinful choices.
He sees into the dark corners and crannies of our hearts and knows everything
about us there is to know. But what He sees only draws out His love.
There is no deeper motivation in God than love. It is His nature to love; He
can do no other; “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Do you have some nameless grief? Some vague, sad pain? Some inexplicable
ache in your heart? Come to Him who made your heart. Jesus said,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).

To know that God is like this, and to know this God, is rest. There is no
more profound lesson than this: He is the one thing that we need.

Shepherd—the word carries with it thoughts of tenderness, security, and
provision, yet it means nothing as long as I cannot say, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

What a difference that monosyllable makes—all the difference in the
world. It means that I can have all of God’s attention all of the time, just as
though I’m the only one. I may be part of a flock, but I’m one of a kind.
It’s one thing to say, “The Lord is a shepherd”; it’s another to say, “The
Lord is my shepherd.” Martin Luther observed that faith is a matter of personal
pronouns: my Lord and my God. This is the faith that saves.

Every morning the Shepherd “calls his own sheep by name and leads them
out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his
sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10:3–4).

This morning as you awakened, His eyes swept over you; He called you by
name and said, “Come, follow me.” It’s a once-for-all thing; it’s an everyday
thing.

Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
—Psalm 95:6–7

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved.