The Lord has promised to His little flock a kingdom. It starts in our hearts as the Savior conforms us to obedience to His reign. Then it manifests itself in His Bride the Church. One day, a physical, visible kingdom will be established with Christ's rule on this earth. Finally, in glory, we shall dwell forever in the kingdom fulfilled, where all is peace and good and righteousness!
But Jesus said this kingdom would be given to His Little Flock. The metaphor of the Shepherd and His sheep is the most common one used by God to describe His relationship to His people in both the Old and New Testaments.
In Psalm 23, we find the Lord as our shepherd. In Ezekiel 34, God promises to appoint Messiah, the Lord Jesus, as the final Shepherd to rescue and protect His sheep.
In the Gospels, the Lord Jesus appropriates that metaphor, making it clear that His is God, and that He will have the responsibility to rescue and protect His sheep, His people. No doubt the wicked rulers of Israel hated Christ's identification as the Shepherd, and therefore, as God manifest in the flesh.
Christ lamented those without a shepherd, for then the flock was scattered and broken. He asserted Himself as the good Shepherd Who dies to save His sheep!
Nobody ever heard of a shepherd that gives his life for his sheep, until the Lord Jesus appeared, and announced that the greater, God incarnate, would lay down His life for the lost and helpless sheep!
The Apostles continued the use of the shepherd/sheep metaphor, tying it in with the prophecy that God's people had gone astray like sheep, but are now returned to the Shepherd, because His dying for them saves them from their sin forever. |
