How God Shepherds Us

The Bible uses the analogy of a shepherd to describe leadership, both how God takes care of his people and also how God expects leaders to take care of God’s people.

The Bible talks a lot about shepherds, and uses shepherding as a controlling metaphor for leadership. It was a word-picture folks understood. For most of human history, people have lived in agrarian contexts. Farming and rural life was a universal experience. Today’s businesses, owners, and managers were the old world’s fields, flocks, and shepherds. Everyone understood what a shepherd was. A lot people were shepherds, were married to shepherds, had shepherds in the family, had friends who were shepherds. Maybe today we could use the example of a doctor. Everyone knows what a doctor is, and everyone has experience with doctors and a general sense of what doctors do. So if I said someone was a like a doctor, you would understand that that someone figures out what’s wrong with you and provides care to heal you and cure you. Similarly, the Bible uses the analogy of a shepherd to describe leadership, both human and divine. Shepherding describes both how God takes care of his people and how God expects leaders to take care of God’s people. Human shepherds follow the pattern of the divine shepherd. The divine shepherd describes his character and conduct most clearly in David’s “Yahweh is my shepherd” psalm (Psalm 23) and Jesus’s “I am the good shepherd” discourse (John 10).

The Person of God the Shepherd

Before we can understand how God shepherds us, we have to understand who God is as the shepherd. David says the shepherd is the LORD, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel: The LORD, Yahweh, is my shepherd (Ps 23:1). There’s truth here bigger than the universe. Yahweh created all things. Yahweh is the I Am who spoke from the flaming bush to Moses. He revealed his name to Moses on the mountain.

The LORD came down in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed his name, “the LORD.” The LORD passed in front of him and proclaimed: “The LORD—the LORD is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:5–7)

Here we see at least a half dozen things about who Yahweh is:

• Yahweh is God, and God is Yahweh. Mighty and majestic.

• Yahweh is compassionate and gracious.

• Yahweh is slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth.

• Yahweh maintains faithful love to a thousand generations.

• Yahweh forgives.

• Yahweh punishes the guilty.

As David summarizes in another Psalm: “You are good and you do good” (Ps 119:68).

The goodness of Yahweh the shepherd strikes us when we hear Jesus say, “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11). When Jesus says that he is the good shepherd, he can only say he is “good” if he is himself God: “A ruler asked him, ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus asked him. ‘No one is good except God alone’” (Luke 18:18-19).

The shepherd is Yahweh the true and living God, the good Lord, and Jesus is Yahweh, the good shepherd. Holy and kind, faithful and true, just and righteous.

God the Shepherd is Present with Us

Once we know God’s nature and character, we can delight in his presence with us and for us. In Psalm 23, the line “you are with me” is “the heart of the poem…the mathematical center…26 words before and 26 words after.” In the first chapters of the story of the world, the presence of the Lord is life for Adam and Eve, but then a terror when they rebel against him. Jesus says he knows his own and they know him (Jn 10:14). This is the presence of personal communion and knowing. We hear his voice whispering in grace and thundering in truth, and it delights us as good news; because when we repent and believe in the gospel, we are his own. We’re hearing a voice we know more truly than our own thoughts.

God the Shepherd Provides for Us

The Psalmist sings of a fundamental act of shepherding: provision.

He lets me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside quiet waters.
He renews my life;
he leads me along the right paths
for his name’s sake. (Ps 23:2-3)
….
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows. (Ps 23:5)

God provides for us in multiple ways.

God provides life

Green pastures and quiet waters speak to the place of feeding and refreshing. The place of life. This is what Jesus the good shepherd provides as he lays down his life for the sheep (Jn 10:11). He gives us spiritual life in the gospel. This life is a renewing and restoring of our souls in the image of God. Sin had corrupted our lives, but God makes us new. I heard a story recently of a man who bought a used Rolls Royce. Rolls Royce cars come with a Starlight Headliner that look like a clear night sky under the stars. This man bought his Rolls Royce, excited about the famously beautiful Starlight ceiling. But something wasn’t quite right. He took it to an authorized Rolls Royce dealer, who explained that the previous owner had replaced the original headliner for an inferior aftermarket one. This is what sin does. It takes a masterpiece and ruins it. That guy immediately traded his Rolls for one with the correct headliner. Thankfully, God doesn’t trade us in. Instead, he restores us and makes us what we were supposed to be all along.

God provides direction

The Lord leads us along right paths. Another way to talk about living as a Christian is following Jesus. In the big picture, God gives us a road map for life, but he also provides us with his Spirit and wisdom to help us turn by turn. He does this as we walk in the Spirit and in community with his people.

God provides abundance

Recently, I was talking with someone in our church who said, “I used to be an optimist. When someone said the cup was half-empty, I said, No it’s half-full. But now,” he said, “The Spirit taught me that the cup is overflowing. I’m not a pessimist or an optimist, but a Christian.” God gives us far beyond what we could ask or imagine. The false gospel of prosperity has said that this is about blessings in this life, whether with health or wealth, or even a sense of purpose and fulfilling our dreams. God doesn’t owe us or promise us those things. He does promise us abundance of joy and hope in Christ. Sometimes he blesses us in obvious ways. He gives us people and places that are beyond our deserving. More importantly, he blessings us in subtle and spiritual ways that embed joy into our hearts for all eternity.

God the Shepherd Protects Us

God doesn’t always protect us from dangerous or scary situations, but he does protect us from fear within those situations. He doesn’t protect us from the shadow, but he protects us from darkness within the shadow. He doesn’t protect us from the threat of wild beasts, but he protects us from the destruction of them. He bludgeons them away with his shepherd’s club like David destroyed the lion and the bear, protecting the flock entrusted to him by his father. Jesus says the same thing, in contrasting his shepherding to the hireling (Jn 10:12-13). The sheep are precious to Jesus. He doesn’t leave. He protects them and keeps them together, because he loves them. How does God protects and what does he protect us from?

God protects us physically

Not all the time, but often, and in ways we don’t even know. This summer, when our family drove down the mountain from our annual Lake Tahoe retreat and back into reality, we slowed into unexpected traffic on the curved two-lane highway. We’d already gotten a later start than we’d hoped, so we weren’t thrilled by the delay. Then we saw the the big rig that had careened into the mountain side of the shoulder and turned over. My wife Laura and I both said, “I wonder if God was protecting us by letting us run late.” He’s certainly known to protect us in such ways.

God protects us emotionally

God does at times allow us to suffer. He allow us to wrestle for a lifetime with mental health and emotional swings. But all the while he holds our hearts and minds in his hands. He often prevents toxic people from staying in our lives. He takes what we think we want in relationships and gives us something better. Right around the time I met my future wife, I was just beginning something like a relationship with a different girl. God put the kibosh on that ill-advised adventure, but at the time I resented it. But literally hours later, I ran into a cute blond named Laura. I kept running into her, and I ended up marrying her. God protected me emotionally.

God protects us spiritually

God fends off the flaming arrows of the enemy. The enemy often attacks us with the Killer Ds of distraction, deception and discouragement. He tries to distract us from the significant with trivial stuff and the grind of life. He tries to turn our hearts and minds to things that aren’t beneficial for us. He lies to us. He tries to get us to believe things that aren’t true. He aims to discourage us. He works to get us down so that we don’t look up. But God faithfully turns the enemy’s fire away, like a Jedi beating away Stormtrooper blasts with a lightsaber.

God protects us eternally

God ultimately protects us as he brings us into his house forever. The body they may kill, but God’s truth abideth still and his kingdom is forever. He promises to keep us there with him.

God the Shepherd Pursues Us

Jesus tells his flock: “I have other sheep that are not from this sheep pen; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd” (Jn 10:16). The good shepherd gathers his sheep together. All sorts of different sheep, with different colors of wool, different dialects of baa, different politics, different economic situations, different ages and shoe sizes. He has other sheep, and he wants to gather them together, into a united flock. He wants to do that with you in your local community.

What do you think? If someone has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, won’t he leave the ninety-nine on the hillside and go and search for the stray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over that sheep more than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. In the same way, it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones perish. (Matthew 18:12–14)

He has sheep in your community that aren’t a part of his flock yet. You’re called to follow the Shepherd, and to help bring them home.