“Safe in the Sheep Pen”.
John 10:1-10
Jesus the Good Shepherd
1. Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ 6Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
7 So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Comment:
“Safe in the Sheep Pen”.
It was early morning, probably around 5.30 to 6.0 am and suddenly I was awake.!
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and then rather groggily propping myself up onto my elbow, I wondered what had woken me. Not much usually did, and so, this early wakeup call, especially on holiday, was rather odd. On holiday! Ah yes, that’s where I was, “on holiday”, with my family in a remote cottage, halfway up a rocky, shale strewn hillside in mountainous Snowdonia, north wales. And then that same sound that woke me, came clearly again, a tinkling, almost melodious rattling. Curiously, I retrieved my glasses from the bedside table, raised my head to window level, pulled back the net curtains and found myself staring into the startled face of a grazing sheep standing just inches away from the glass. Panicked by this unexpected encounter with this rather sleepy and equally startled English visitor, the sheep then disappeared rather rapidly up the hillside, its hooves, scattering Shaley stones noisily in its wake. It was this happy sound of stones displaced by nimble hooves, that eventually came to characterise this particular enjoyable stay in North Wales. The sheep were quite at home, and I, although enjoying the experience immensely, was not. My home was far away in the somewhat flatter environs of Canvey Island in Essex.
Sheep often featured in the stories or parables that Jesus told. He lived and moved amongst rural people and so used everyday experiences common to country life in Israel to make a point. And he did mix his metaphors in the process. His famous “I am’s”, for instance; I am the Door, I am the Way, I am the Living Water, I am the truth, I am the Good Shepherd, I am the life, and here in John 10v7, I am the gate of the sheep. They all revealed aspects of his identity, purpose and mission. So what was this parable about sheep in a sheep pen all about? Who are all the players supposed to be? The Shepherd, the thief/ bandit, the gatekeeper, the stranger and the gate.
The thing about parables is that to ask such a question may be to ask the wrong question. The better question to ask would be, “What point or points was Jesus making by telling the story”? To ascertain this it is always wise to look back at the text that comes immediately before the parable. In this instance it was the account of the man blind from birth, who Jesus had healed, who was then excommunicated from the synagogue by the Pharisees in charge, simply for giving a truthful account of what had happened. Jesus caught up and spoke with the man who, because he was blind at the time, had never actually seen Jesus. However, as Jesus identified himself as the “Son of Man” who could be believed in, known and trusted, the healed man recognised his voice and said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped Jesus. Jesus then made his teaching point to all who were in earshot, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of those who heard this aside were the very same Pharisees who had disbarred the healed man from the synagogue. This particular sect of Jewish teachers considered themselves to be reformers attempting to steer the other brand of Jewish teachers (the Sadducees), into being faithful to their vocational task of being good shepherds in the ancient traditions of the Old Testament Levitical priests. Sadly, instead of reforming the system the Pharisees worked to usurp Sadducees and to replace them with their own brand of dry legalism. They ended up being just as bad in their shepherding of Israel.
When these Pharisees heard the remark about those who were supposed to see being made blind, they said to Jesus, “Are we also blind” and he rather stingingly replied, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains."
And then Jesus told the parable of the sheep fold, of bandits and thieves hopping over the fence rather than using the gate, and lastly of sheep who follow the shepherd, not because they can see him, but because they know and recognise his voice. Ouch! That must have stung a bit I suspect!!
We know our Lord as “Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild”, and that is right, he is, but he was also not afraid of calling out injustice and hypocrisy when he saw it.
Thus when Jesus in this parable said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber, it seems reasonable to me to think that Jesus had the Pharisees in mind to play this particular role of thieves and robbers in the story, as it was they who had climbed into the sheepfold of Jewish worship by another way.
By contrast, Jesus in this parable refers to himself as the gatekeeper who both lets sheep into the safety of his fold and whose voice is known and trusted enough to lead them out again to follow him as he leads them to fresh green pasture. The picture at the beginning of this study shows the difference between Middle Eastern sheep husbandry and that in the West. Here in the UK, even on the Snowdonian hills, sheep are rounded up by the shepherd and sheep dogs (and nowadays by dune buggy), and then herded into their pens. Not so in Palestine where the shepherd (or gatekeeper), goes ahead of the sheep, leading them to nourishment and to the safety of the sheep fold. Our Shepherds shut the gate and go home to a roast dinner. The shepherds of Jesus day, lay down and slept in the entrance of the sheep pen. They became the gate. Nothing went in or out of the Sheepfold without waking them up. With Lions and Wolves around, these shepherds literally put their lives on the line, or in the doorway, for their sheep. Thus Jesus said, “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture”.
To summarise and conclude. There are a number of points that Jesus was making to his listeners in this parable. Here are my thoughts and suggestions.
-Jesus is our guide, protector, and leader. He can be trusted. He also laid down his life for the sheep.
-Just as sheep know the voice of their shepherd so we can know that same level of intimacy and guidance with Jesus,
-The Good shepherd guards His flock and similarly Jesus has our best interests at heart.
-A shepherd belongs with His sheep, and anyone else trying to break in will not succeed.
- If we let him, and don’t wander out of the fold, Jesus will be our gatekeeper both now and to eternal safety.
-In short, the main objective of this parable was to communicate that all can trust and rely on Jesus.
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To Ponder:
What kind of shepherds have you encountered, or what kind of shepherd are you?
How do you feel about Jesus as the gate?