I used to think that sheep were incredibly dumb. They graze, present, with no perception of the future. They flock, they wander off, unabashedly content. You only have to watch them for a few minutes at a farm or on a YouTube video to feel the peace they carry.
Conversely, most humans lack peace. We hustle through the present, dragging behind us fears, coping mechanisms, victories, and disappointments while scrambling to grasp or fight the future. Much of our hustling is in our head. Could you imagine carrying your unique lived experience with all the dreams, to-dos, and losses into a great big field and then just… sitting with it? Not for twenty minutes or an hour. For a day. Then two days. Then a week. Then a month. Flocking, grazing, wandering, endlessly. At some point, you’d think sheep would wake up and begin to do something.
And yet Jesus calls us sheep.
The Old Testament frequently refers to God’s people as a flock of sheep, brought out of Egypt, led through the wilderness, gone astray. In Isaiah, Christ Himself is likened to a lamb silent before his shearers. Jesus carries this metaphor over into the Gospels, broadening the flock to include Gentiles as well as Jews and even commanding Peter to “Feed my sheep” (John 21: 15-17).
Most beautifully, Jesus names Himself as the Good Shepherd. Not only does He describe us as sheep, but He claims us as His own. When I think of a shepherd with sheep—the enormity of difference between them, the helplessness of the sheep, and the responsibility of the shepherd to feed, guide, protect, gather, and seek out the lost—it feels almost too good to be true. Surely God doesn’t take that much responsibility for us?
This revelation about sheep gently hit my heart a summer ago. For days, I had been agonizing over a rising belief that God’s voice was too hard to hear. Emotional turmoil certainly crowded my mind, but try as I might, I could not hear Him in all of the normal places—my journal, worship, silence, walks outside. Finally I said to God, “I know you’re speaking… I just don’t think I’m capable of hearing you.”
His whisper back was immediate and hit my soul: “My sheep hear my voice.”
“Then I’m not your sheep,” I cried back, even as I realized the implication of what had just happened. I had just heard His voice, so I was His sheep. I was His sheep, that’s why I heard His voice. And He considered me a sheep.
I didn’t quite know what to do with this revelation. Probably because I am a sheep, the meaning was a little beyond me, but I began to read John 10, over and over—the passage about the Good Shepherd. Echoes of what He’d said popped up around me. I’d drive under bridges labeled “Sheepford Road” or pass through a development called “Shepherdstown.”
I knew I’d heard God’s voice… even months later. But I still didn’t understand what it meant. What did it mean to be a sheep? Was He promising that I’d always hear His voice? Or just sometimes when I was really desperate?
John 10:3-4 says that the sheep “listen” to the Shepherd’s “voice… He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out. When He has brought out all His own, He goes on ahead of them, and His sheep follow Him because they know His voice” (NIV).
This explanation renders our instruction to follow Jesus profoundly personal. Jesus knows our names. While our culture may casually toss out Shakespeare’s infamous line, “What’s in a name?”, there truly is so much in a name. Our names mean something. They differentiate us and belong to us. Sometimes they even hold our stories. I think of a divorced person who reclaims their original name or a child adopted.
Like a good shepherd, Jesus takes the time to intimately know us. In fact, like a shepherd, He probably is more acquainted and aware of our ways than even we are. Therefore, His shepherding is personal. He takes us where He knows we need and want to be.
More significantly, His sheep “hear” His voice. They hear the sound of His voice, His tone, the proximity of His voice. He doesn’t say His sheep understand His voice.
No one would sit down with a sheep and present a twenty-point sermon on where the sheep is, what they’ve accomplished so far, and where they’re going in life. You wouldn’t expect a sheep to understand a detailed explanation of the day’s wanderings or even a command like, “Graze over here, not over there.” Certainly, you wouldn’t say, “Hey, please don’t wander off today. It wastes a lot of my time trying to find you, and this is the last day I’m willing to do that for you.”
No, in fact, it is the Shepherd’s responsibility to take charge of guiding. He welcomes and comforts the sheep with the tone of His voice. He uses His staff to physically guide them. It is built into His nature to understand that He is responsible for finding those who wander off… every single time.
Yet for some reason, as humans, we assume so much more responsibility for our own walk with the Lord than perhaps is necessary. We feel we need to grab hold of the future. We need to understand where we are going before we follow. When things aren’t going well, we are quick to blame God, others, or even ourselves, panicked because we think we are responsible for getting ourselves back to the flock.
I think of the disciples who felt frustrated when they couldn’t understand the meaning of the parables. They wanted it spelled out plainly, and even when Jesus did explain clearly, like about His death and resurrection, they often still couldn’t understand.
Even Paul, one of the greatest disciples, was not responsible for his own salvation. It was a supernatural, blinding light on his own journey to Damascus that opened the door to Jesus’ flock. He didn’t ask for it. The Good Shepherd saw his value and went after him.
I don’t mean to say that we don’t have a choice or responsibility in our destiny. Certainly there are human consequences for sin, and God will never force us to walk in righteousness and to turn our hearts towards Him. Like sheep, we have the autonomy to wander off, even to dig in our heels when the Shepherd finds us and refuse to move.
Yet like sheep, we are not responsible for the future. We don’t have to work all things for our good. God does. We are not expected to guide ourselves or to know where we are going. Sheep are a little dumb, but in some ways that’s incredibly wise. They are wired to trust their Shepherd’s voice entirely, no matter where He leads them. It’s like God knows they’ll be more content if they don’t have to worry about tomorrow.
Like sheep, we follow. We listen for the sound of our Shepherd’s voice. It might be a whisper. It might be an encouragement from a friend, a verse that pops out to us, an open door to a job, or an impression to move across the country. We don’t need to understand the why or the how. We just need to follow. His voice and staff will guide us to the pastures we need.
And if we wander off, intentionally or unintentionally, so distanced from His voice that we can’t perceive it, He will come find us. Somehow, some way. We will hear His voice and know it’s Him.