Sheep!

Warm Up: John 10:1-18

The summer before my senior year I was really fortunate and went on a trip to Fiji and New Zealand. Before I get into anything spiritual, can I just highly recommend traveling abroad while you are in college? See the world God has made, either through study abroad or just going to another country with friends and backpacking around. Sure it will cost you some money, but the experience will be worth way more than the cost. Trust me, I can promise you that ten years down the road you will not be saying, “I sure am glad I did not go to New Zealand or Europe, because otherwise I may not have this nice rug.” The experience you get out of traveling abroad is amazing, and there is no better time than the youthful and adventurous days you are living in right now.

OK, the shameless plug is now over. I was in New Zealand for four weeks and it was incredible. I could go on and on about it, but I am only going to focus on the final week of my trip. New Zealand has tons of sheep. When I was there they had a human population of four million, and a sheep population of thirty million. Yikes. That is a lot of sheep. For one whole week, I had the good fortune of working with these creatures, and it was very interesting.

George and Mildred

I grew up hearing about sheep in the Bible and being told that they were not smart animals. Nothing I heard, however, could demonstrate their stupidity as much as experiencing them first hand. Let me just say that every stereotype you have ever heard about sheep is true. They are the stupidest, most foolish, and most obnoxious animals I have ever spent time with. And you know what the great irony is? God compares us, His people, to sheep all throughout the Bible. Yeah. Not very encouraging, right?

It took me about five minutes with these wooly beasts to look up at the sky and tell God I was so sorry. They were driving me crazy, but I knew that everything they did was similar to a way I had acted around God before. It was ridiculous. The sheep were about a week or two away from having their lambs. This meant that all of the sheep I worked with were pregnant, and almost ready to give birth. We needed to prepare them for “lambing,” so every day we ventured out into the thirteen hundred acre farm with the sheep dogs and corralled some sheep into a paddock. Here we gave them vaccinations for various diseases, as well as a tasty mineral supplement. These were helpful to both the sheep and the lambs they were carrying because it would enter the lambs’ bloodstream before they were even born.

I had the joyous task of hopping in the paddock, crowded with sheep, and giving each one of them shots. Needless to say, it was very up close and personal and I learned a great deal about them in a short time. As has been said before, they are stupid. Some were pretty good about taking the shots, but most of them would freak out before I even got close to them. They would begin to try and escape when there was nowhere to go, and instead of taking the shot, which caused a little bit of pain, they would ram (pun intended) their heads into fences, jump on top of other sheep, and do anything they could to avoid me.


In the Sheep Pin

There are so many times in my life when I sense God approaching. Sometimes I know it may hurt, and so I start to panic and do anything I can to avoid Him. I run into fences and give myself much more pain than what He is bringing. And although the vaccines may be painful, they are good for me and necessary for my survival. But still, I choose to do whatever I can to escape. Unfortunately, I can’t escape God just like the sheep could not escape me. They may have resisted for a few minutes, but in the end they felt the needle. God is infinitely more resolute and powerful than I am, and when He wants to do something in your life, He will get it done.

But the sheep comparisons do not end there. In fact, I am just getting started. They were incredibly stubborn. In order to get them to change directions, I had to grab them by the face and literally turn their head around with my hand. They simply would not go somewhere unless they could see where they were headed.

This example really struck home, because I am pretty stubborn myself. When God wants me to do something, I do not want to do it unless I can see where I will end up. Sometimes I just refuse to listen, and He has to grab be by the face and turn my life back in the right direction. This is not a pleasant experience usually, and He has creative ways of turning heads.

Sheep always follow the crowd too. They would never go to the end of the paddock unless they saw some other sheep on the other side. They lived on these huge pastures where any of them could go wherever they wanted, but in every pasture there was a trail about a foot wide where the grass had been constantly walked on. Despite the size of their living space, the sheep always followed the same path and never adventured out away from it. Remember how your mom always asked, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do that too?” Well, I am fairly certain sheep would respond with a yes to this question.

It is amazing how people will do anything if they are following others. I have seen so many friends go down the same path that they know will not end well. How many wealthy people, college students, and co-workers have to die from a drug overdose before people realize that it is not a good solution to their problems? How many people need to seek after money so hard that they lose their family and never find satisfaction before we realize that money will not complete us? And yet we, like sheep, will follow another person straight into oblivion without a second thought.

My last observation about sheep is they were truly lost without a shepherd. When the dogs would be herding them, all of the sheep would move closely together as a single pack. Occasionally, however, one would get separated from the group. Every time this happened, the sheep would make it a few steps and then stop. It would look around and be totally clueless about what to do. It stayed frozen in place until it either saw the pack of sheep again and chased after them, or a dog came back and barked it back in right direction. They were literally lost, and had no idea what to do.

What a real shepherd looks like

Just like sheep, when we get separated from the pack, we get totally lost. We need to be a part of the body of Christ, and we need to have other believers close by. When we wander away from God, we are pretty much screwed. But there is good news, because we have such a good shepherd. No matter how far we wander, Jesus will come and find us and bring us back home to the family.

So remember, you are like a sheep. I know, it is not exactly a complement, but I’m sorry, you are like a sheep. We are stubborn, foolish creatures and we follow others into oblivion. When we are on our own we can get pretty lost, and when God wants to act in our lives we are quick to fight and resist. But, like I said, we have a good shepherd. He loves us and will take care of us. He loves us so much, in fact, that he willingly gave up his life to save ours. He will not give us pain unless there is a good reason for it. He will not let us wander alone for long, and will always bring us back. We may have to be bold and go off the beaten track to follow him, but at the sound of his voice we can have peace and confidence that what we are doing can bring life, and not just any life, but life to the full.

Sheep. They may be annoyingly stupid, but they have a special place in my heart now. And as long as I pursue Jesus, I do not think that will ever change.