April 7th, 2011 14:22 by Dave As we finish off memorising Psalm 23, these words from Phillip Keller’s book A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 serve as a fitting conclusion:
My neighbour’s sickly sheep would stand huddled at the fence . . . facing the rich fields in which my flock flourished. Those poor, abused, neglected creatures under the ownership of a heartless rancher had known nothing but suffering most of the year. They were thin and sickly with disease, scab and parasite. There seemed to lurk in their eyes the slender, faint hope that perhaps they could break through the fence or crawl through some hole.
Once during king tides, three sheep went down on the tidal flats and slipped around the end of the fence and snuck onto my paddock . . . . As they were not my property, I loaded them into a wheelbarrow and wheeled them back to their heartless owner. He simply pulled out a sharp knife and slit the throats of his sickly sheep. He couldn’t care less.
What a picture of Satan who holds ownership of so many! Right there the graphic account Jesus portrayed of Himself as being the door and entrance by which he sheep were to end His fold flashed across my mind. Those poor sheep had not come through the proper gate. I had never let them in. They had never really become mine, under my ownership and care . . . . In short, they tried to get in on their own. The same fate awaits those who try to make their own escape from Satan’s wretched ranch, trying to get into God’s green pasture on their own, apart from Christ!
Yet there is only one way into this fold. Jesus, our Good Shepherd boldly declared, “I am the Gate; whoever enters through Me will be saved. and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” (John 10:9)
