The Good Shepherd
Seventh Sabbath — He Lays Down His Life
Sequence 43 is Mem (40) and Gimel (3). The Mem is water, the womb and the hidden depths — the letter drawn closed to conceal what it carries. The Gimel is the camel, the runner who carries provision across distance to those who cannot come and get it. A carrier and a hidden supply: the Shepherd who goes out over ground the sheep cannot cross, carrying what they cannot fetch, and who knows by name the ones He is carrying it to.
The theme.
The Son claims a title that carries both tenderness and authority. The good shepherd is not chiefly the one who comforts; He is the one who dies rather than run, and who knows His own by name. This is the middle Sabbath of the quarter, and the hinge of it: everything before has shown who He is, and everything after will follow Him to the cross and beyond it.
The School of Scriptures.
I.The Hired Hand Flees
The contrast in the passage is not between good and bad shepherds but between an owner and an employee. The hired hand leaves because the sheep are not his own. Teach the congregation to recognise the difference in those who lead them, and to recognise it in themselves wherever they carry responsibility for people.
II.I Know My Own
The knowledge is mutual and it is compared to the knowledge between the Father and the Son — the highest analogy available in the Gospel. Address the believer who feels generically saved but not personally known. The text will not permit that anonymity.
III.No One Takes It From Me
In John 10:18 the Son insists that no one takes His life; He lays it down of His own initiative. This governs how the cross must be preached in this house: not as a tragedy that happened to Him, but as an act He performed. He was not overpowered.
IV.No One Will Snatch Them Out of My Hand
Close on the security of the sheep. The promise is not that the flock will never be attacked but that it cannot be seized. Distinguish carefully between assurance and presumption, and let the congregation hear that their grip on Him is not what holds — His grip on them is.
The Table.
This week, be an owner rather than a hired hand in one place where you have been going through the motions — a marriage, a team, a class, a person under your care. Stay where you have been preparing to leave, and say so to someone.