Christ perfects the metaphor of God's people as His sheep, by being the Good Shepherd, and dying to save His sheep. Thus Christ's sheep have far greater promises and benefits than were expressed to the sheep of God in the Old Testament.
While the sheep of God in the Old Testament are subject to judgment and being cast out, Christ's sheep cannot be judged, because our Shepherd has already taken all our faults and crimes upon Himself and been judged in our place. This is why none of Christ's sheep can ever perish.
Those sheep in olden times had not been justified by a sacrifice, but all of Christ's flock have been perfected by the blood of Jesus' offering.
Another difference is this: the Old Testament sheep, the people of Israel, often refused to hear God's voice. An early example was Israel's refusal to believe God's promise of rest in the promised land, and all those who refused to believe perished in the wilderness. God's flock was always and repeatedly refusing to hear His voice, as the Psalmist lamented in Psalm 95.
Not so with Jesus' sheep! "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me," Jesus declared. That's because Christ's blood executed the New Covenant, by which God fulfilled His promise that His people would know Him and hear Him.
It is significant that the metaphor of God's people as His sheep was introduced by the shepherd David, the son of Jesse. He had practical experience with the care and protection of sheep, and he saw clearly that the metaphor was appropriate to describe God's relationship to His people.
How glorious that the Lord Jesus, the long-promised son of David, should take up that metaphor and perfect it!
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...