GOD’S WORD FOR OCTOBER 4

We are using Charles Spurgeon book, “The Risen King.”  It’s a collection of well chosen excerpts from Spurgeon’s  “Easter” sermons in devotional form, put together by Jeff Medders.   Pastor Spurgeon lived from 1834 to 1892  in London, England, and had a unique gift of understanding and showing the depth of our faith.  Thus, his reverential title as the Prince of Preachers.   Even though we’re not in or near that season, every day is a good day to focus on Christ’s sacrifice and victory for us!

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THE GOOD SHEPHERD

John 10:14-15

“I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.  As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.”

When our Lord says, “I am the good shepherd,” He means to tell us that the real, the truest, the best, and the most sure example of shepherding is Himself.   Every good thing that you can imagine to be, or that should be, in a shepherd, you find in the Lord.

He is your owner and caretaker.

The Lord Jesus Christ is never off duty.

He leads you, His sheep, wherever you have to go.

Do you not see the blessed Shepherd leading your own pilgrimage? 

Can you not see Him guiding your way?

Let us respond, “Lead on, O blessed Lord; lead on, and we will follow the traces of your feet!”

Think on how He says, “I know my own and my own know me.”  He knows our number He will never lose one.  He knows the number of those for who He paid the ransom price.  He knows the age and character of every one of His own.  He assures us that the very hairs of our head are all numbered.  Christ doesn’t have an unknown sheep.  It is not possible that He should have overlooked or forgotten one of them.  He has such an intimate knowledge of all who are redeemed with His most precious blood that He never mistakes one of them for another nor misjudges one of them.  He knows our constitutions – those that are weak and feeble, those that are nervous and frightened, those that are strong, those that have a tendency to presumption, those that are sleepy, those that are brave, those that are sick, sorry, worried, or wounded.  He knows those that are hunted by the devil, those that are caught up between the jaws of the lion and shaken till the very life is almost driven out of them.  He knows our feelings, fears, and frights.

Our good Shepherd knows our sins.  I often feel glad to think that He always did know our evil natures, and what would come of them.  When He chose us, He knew what we were, and what we would be.  He did not buy His sheep in the dark.  He did not choose us without knowing all the devious ways of our past and future lives.

Here is the splendor of His grace:  Romans 8:29 “whom He foreknew, He also predestined.”  His election implies foreknowledge of all our ill manners.  They say of human love that it is blind, but Christ’s love has many eyes, and all its eyes are open and yet He loves us still.

I like to think of our good Shepherd not merely as dying for us but as willingly laying down His life.  When He spoke these words, it had not been done then.  But now it has been done.  “I lay down My life for the sheep”  may now be read, “I have laid down My life for the sheep.” 

For you, beloved, He has given His hands to the nails and His feet to the cruel iron.  For you He has cried, “Eloi, Eloi, Lema sabachthani.” (Mark 15:34);  for you He has given up His life.  He glories in substitution for His people.  He makes it His boast, when He speaks of His chosen, that He suffered in their stead:  that He bore – that they might never bear – the wrath of God on account of sin.

What He glories in, we also glory in.  “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14).

 Oh Beloved, what a blessed Christ we have, who loves us so, who knows us so – Whom we also know and love!

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John 10:11-12

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.  But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.”

Matthew 10:30

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

Isaiah 53:6

All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Ephesians 1:4

just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,

Ephesians 2:10

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Psalm 100:3

Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Psalm 95:7-8

For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice: harden not your hearts…

Matthew 25:32

All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.

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