Shepherd The Flock Part 2 - 1 Peter 5:2a Series

Sheep are also very fragile emotionally. They are extremely easily discouraged. If something is hard, they just give up. I heard that sheep are so top heavy that if a sheep tips over onto its back, it can’t get itself back up. It will kick for a little while, and then finally just give up and die. I found that hard to believe, so I looked into it and sure enough – just type in “sheep on its back” in Youtube and you can watch one after another. They can’t get back up.

And after they have been stuck a while, they lose circulation and can’t walk. And again – they will try a couple times and then just give up. This sheep was stuck in mud, and when it was released, it tries one time to walk, falls, and just lays down in the mud and gives up. So the shepherd has to carry that lamb around until it gets circulation back. Same way if they get injured. They don’t have a strong self-preservation instinct, so if things get hard they often just give up.

Sheep could never survive without shepherds. I don’t know how the evolutions explain the existence of sheep, but it seems to me if evolution were true, the shepherd would have to have evolved first, before the sheep. Otherwise the very first sheep that ever came into existence would have gone right back out of existence before it had a chance to mate with anything.

Sheep are also very easily led astray. They have an instinct to follow a leader. And the leader is not necessarily the smartest or oldest or wisest sheep. Just whatever sheep starts moving first, they all follow – even if he has no idea where he is going. So sheep are very easily misled. In fact, in many cases the way they get sheep to go into the slaughter house is by training a goat to lead them in there. Sheep are very easily frightened, and if they have too much anxiety right before slaughter, the adrenaline can affect the meat, so they have to keep them calm. So they train this goat to just start walking into the slaughter house, they all follow it in there, a side door opens, the goat goes out, and the sheep are slaughtered. They actually call it the Judas goat. And the sheep will follow that Judas goat right in to the slaughter house just because he looks like he knows where he is going.

Sheep are so vulnerable. They get attacked and eaten by predators, they cannot do anything about it, they are easily lost, easily misled, easily confused, they can’t feed themselves, can’t take care of themselves, can’t defend themselves, can’t find their own way, and they are so easily discouraged that sometimes they just tip over and die.

If you read much about sheep at all it does not take long before you get the sense that God must have specifically designed sheep just to give us a look in the mirror. Our spiritual existence is so similar to the way sheep are. And not only in negative ways. When it comes to their relationship with the shepherd, they have some very good traits. You may have heard that sheep are especially dumb. But actually, compared to other animals, they are quite intelligent. They have extremely good memories – especially when it comes to the voice or the face of the shepherd. If a shepherd calls a sheep’s name, that sheep will come to him. And if the regular shepherd is gone and someone else is there, they will know. In fact, studies have shown that sheep can remember up to 50 different faces for two years. Sheep are specifically designed by God to recognize and follow the shepherd.