The Daily Word

In these days of advanced technology and use of materials and techniques that certainly were not available in the time of the New Testament, we can perhaps stare and wonder at what went on and imagine it was hardly adequate, judged by our current standards. This certainly applied in the country even more than the populated areas of Israel in Jesus’ time. The Bible has far more to say about sheep than cattle, possibly because sheep were more erratic in their behaviour than cows, and in reality they were more like human beings than cattle. The well-known chapter in Isaiah has a verse which says, “All we like sheep have gone astray….”. Two of the ‘I am’ statements made by Jesus have reference to sheep or shepherds and today we look at the first, “I am the door of the sheep”.

At first sight, and with our 21st century perspective, this looks like a total anomaly. It doesn’t even make grammatical sense until we revert back to the way shepherds worked in Jesus’ time. At night, the shepherd would not leave his sheep out in the open fields where they could be hunted by wild animals. Instead, he would lead them to a stone enclosure without a gate, and they would follow him into the enclosure in total trust, and he would then lie down at the entrance to literally form a ‘door’ and in that way protect the sheep from predators. Because the sheep trusted him, they would remain penned in until the shepherd led them out in the morning.

This is a beautiful picture of Jesus care and devotion for each of us. It also echoes the thought in John 14 where Jesus said, “I am the Way… no one comes to the Father except by me”. Belief in Jesus is the only way to eternal safety, security and satisfaction, there is NO alternative to achieve those blessings.

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church