I suppose you think you already know all I can say about sheep and lambs, and maybe you do. Yet I dare say that he never took the Bible from him to see how many times they are mentioned there, or how many beautiful things are said about them.
Abel, who, as you know, was the third man to live on earth, was a “sheep shepherd”; and there have always been many pastors in the world from that time to this. Some of the men who lived in ancient times had many sheep. Job had seven thousand, which God permitted to be taken from him; but then he gave her double: fourteen thousand. At the time Solomon’s beautiful temple was dedicated to God, he offered a sacrifice of one hundred and twenty thousand sheep. If you want to know how many there are, try to think of a meadow with a hundred sheep in it; then think of a hundred pastures, like this one, with the same number of sheep in each one; then think of those hundred grasses that have taken twelve. times, and you will begin to understand how many there were. It is not common for us to have people whose only business is to take care of the sheep, but that has always been the case in biblical countries. This was not done by servants, at least not always; because many rich men employed their sons as shepherds. Rachel, who later became Jacob’s wife, “tended her father’s sheep,” so did Jacob’s twelve sons, as did Moses for his father-in-law.
When God was about to make David king, he sent the prophet Samuel to do so by anointing or putting oil on his head. David had six brothers, and Samuel did not know which of all the sons was going to be king; but both he and his father Jesse assumed that he would be one of the oldest, and no one even remembered to call little David, who had stayed with the sheep, until they discovered that he was the one God had chosen. David often spoke of his shepherd life after he became king, and even when he was an old man. Remember that most beautiful psalm of his, the twenty-third: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; In green pastures he makes me rest; Beside still waters he leads me.” This is how they are used to in those countries: the shepherd walks and the sheep follow where he wants them to go. Then Christ says: “And when he (the shepherd) leads his sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice.”
Sheep in many countries are endangered by wolves, who prowl and try to carry them off; so it is necessary to monitor them both at night and during the day. Remember that shepherds were watching over their flocks at night when bright angels appeared to tell them the good news that A SAVIOR had come; and they were the first to hear that sweet song in the stillness of the night, when all around them fell silent in sleep.
The sheep is so shy and gentle that it needs the protection of man, and without the shepherd’s care it often strays and gets lost or is eaten by other animals. David says: “I have gone astray like a lost sheep”; and in Isaiah we read: “All of us like sheep have gone astray.” Is this not true of us: that we have drifted far away from Jesus, our good shepherd? Perhaps, dear girl, you are still wandering; but why should you go on like this, alone and in danger every hour? Why should you, when he calls to you with his kind voice and is ready to “take you in his arms and carry you in his bosom”? like the shepherd with the tender lambs of him?