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John 10 introduces us to an extended use of the shepherd metaphor. Jesus is the “good shepherd” who leads His sheep to pasture and protects them from wolves (vv. 11–12). One statement requires some explanation: “When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice” (v. 4). I grew up on a sheep farm where dogs drove sheep from one location to another, but that is not how ancient Near Eastern farmers moved sheep around. Instead of driving sheep, they led them. A farmer walked before his sheep, who followed him because they trusted him. They listened to his voice (v. 3).
Did Jesus have Psalm 23 in mind? Maybe. But the metaphor of the Lord as a Shepherd occurs frequently in the Old Testament. Jacob blesses his son Joseph and refers to God as having been “my shepherd all my life long to this day” (Gen. 48:15). The prophet Isaiah speaks of God as caring for His people as a shepherd cares for his little lambs (Isa. 40:11). Micah similarly calls on the Lord to shepherd His people “with your staff” (Mic. 7:14). Psalm 78 describes the exodus from Egypt with these words: “Then he led out his people like sheep and guided them in the wilderness like a flock” (v. 52).
But perhaps the most familiar reference to God as a Shepherd is the opening line of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd.” This Shepherd leads His people to “green pastures” and “still waters” and “paths of righteousness” (vv. 2–3). Even in “the valley of the shadow of death,” He promises to comfort them with the use of His rod and staff (v. 4). There is a promise of a table spread with good things, even in the presence of enemies, and in the end the assurance that His sheep will dwell with Him “in the house of the Lord forever” (v. 6).
Older generations will recall the record company EMI’s familiar logo of a dog (“Nipper”) with its head tilted to the side, listening to a gramophone. The label was known as His Master’s Voice and was taken from a painting made in the 1890s by an English artist named Francis Barraud. Christians also do the same. They listen to their Master’s voice. They recognize it even in the midst of calamity and pain. It is a voice that speaks in the words of Scripture, for every word of Scripture is ultimately Jesus speaking. The sheep follow Him, for they know His voice.
During the American Civil War, shortly after his ordination at First Baptist Church in Philadelphia in 1862, Joseph Gilmore penned these lines of a hymn:
He leadeth me: O blessed thought!
O words with heav’nly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’re I be,
Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.
It is indeed a blessed thought that the Good Shepherd leads us every step of the way with His reassuring voice.