Does God simply love stupid sheep?
Baaaa. Do you really want to know?
Obviously, God believes people are a lot like wooly, inept, four-legged creatures who prefer their ignorance and would run from safety rather than trust the one who loves them.
His description in Isaiah 53:6, alas, sums it up: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we all have turned to his own way.”
Yet, even knowing and describing people that way, God still sent Jesus to redeem us from, well, you know.
What can we learn from them?
Facts about sheep you may not know.
- If they fall over, they have no way of getting up.
- If they lay on their backs too long, their lungs can collapse from the weight of their wool.
- For that reason, shepherds routinely graze them on hillsides. The thought is, that if they fall over, they’ll keep rolling down the hill until they pile up against the fence.
- A shepherd has to roll his sheep over onto their feet every twelve hours.
- While staying at a farmer’s B&B in Cornwall, my husband and son helped find the farmer’s flock pilled up on a fence and helped roll them back onto their feet. They trotted away.
- Lambs and ewes all have poor depth perception and often stumble into dangerous places.
- They have good peripheral vision, however, especially needful when the wool grows over their eyes. (Do you better understand “pulling the wool over their eyes” now?).
- They have no way to protect themselves and thus become victimized by eye-pecking birds.
- Many sheep, therefore, are blind and only know which way to go when they hear their shepherd’s voice.
- Actually, they’re not all that stupid–nearly as clever as pigs–but they are headstrong. (Think Maa in Babe).
Shepherds and their flocks
I thought about shepherds and their flocks recently while writing a post about King David.
He was a shepherd, and Scripture calls Jesus the Good Shepherd.
The Bible is ripe with references to shepherds and their flocks.
(Check out Strong’s Concordance on the subject here).
Sheep are challenging.
They’re stupid, unruly, ungrateful, unable to protect themselves, and vulnerable to death by simply rolling over.
Does that remind you of anyone you know?
Yet, anyone who can control, or at least keep alive, such creatures must be a special individual.
Hence, the need for a shepherd.
John 10:3-5 tells us why:
The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.
John 10:3-5 ESV
According to Pastor David Guzik:
During World War I, some soldiers tried to steal a flock of sheep from a hillside near Jerusalem. The sleeping shepherd awoke to find his flock being driven off.
He couldn’t recapture them by force, so he called out to his flock with his distinctive call. The sheep listened and returned to their rightful owner. The soldiers couldn’t stop the sheep from returning to their shepherd’s voice.
Enduring Word.com, John 10:6
The hapless animals both need and want their shepherd.
Two fine books on the subject of sheep and shepherds
Sheep are a common topic in New Testament literature.
Two fine books have been written about them:
Suzanne Tietjen’s The Sheep of His Hand:
The book is a walk through the Psalms with stories are full of deep lessons.
Sheep are individuals who differ from each other and benefit from individualized care. Shepherds have always dealt with primal concerns – birth, death, love, rejection. Technology has changed much in the last millennium but the mud and the blood of shepherding are timeless – and sheep are still sheep.
Suzanne Tietjen’s website.
W. Phillip Keller’s A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23:
Keller pointed out that sheep cannot just take care of themselves. They need a shepherd who knows every inch of the land, every pit fall, and every hide out where predatory creatures hide as they wait for the unsuspecting wooly prey.
He compares their intelligence and knowledge to the shepherd’s, then draws the parallel between our limited abilities and God’s Divine Intelligence.
Ben: “Learning from a Real Shepherd,” accessed June 13,2022; not available June 20.
Baa Humbug? Or Baa, Relief?
I’m going with relief that my Shepherd, Jesus, looks at me, His sheep, with love–and I’d like to think a smile of exasperated affection.
After all, God created me this way.
Tweetables
What did God have in mind when he created people to act like sheep? Click to Tweet
If sheep are so stupid–and God likens us to sheep–DOES He really love us? Click to Tweet
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?