Читать книгу A Guide to Fervent Prayer - A.W. Pink - Страница 20

This title of Christ’s was most pertinent and appropriate in an Epistle to Jewish converts, for the Old Testament had taught them to look for the Messiah in that specific function. Moses and David, eminent types of Him, were shepherds. Concerning the first it is said, "Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron" (Ps. 77:20). Under the name of the second God promised the Messiah to Israel: "And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant [the antitypical] David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd" (Ezek. 34:23, brackets mine). That Paul here made reference to that particular prophecy is clear from what it went on to say: "And I will. make with them a covenant of peace" (v. 25). Here in Hebrews 13:20, the same three things are brought together: the God of peace, the great Shepherd, the everlasting covenant, and in a manner (in perfect accord with the theme of the Epistle) that refuted the erroneous conception that the Jews had formed of their Messiah. They imagined that He would secure for them an external deliverance as Moses had done and a prosperous national state as David had set up. They had no idea that He would shed His precious blood and be brought down into the grave, though they should have known and understood it in the light of prophetic revelation.

When Christ appeared in their midst, He definitely presented Himself to the Jews in this character. He not only declared, "I am the good shepherd:" but added this: "the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep" (John 10:11). John the Baptist, Christ’s forerunner, heralded His public manifestation in this wise: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). In this dual character, or under this twofold revelation, the Lord Jesus had been prophesied in Isaiah 53 (as viewed against the backdrop of Ezek. 34): "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him [i.e. the Shepherd, whose the sheep are!] the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6, brackets mine; cf. Zech. 13:7). Note a wonderful congruity of expression between the next verse of Isaiah’s prophecy (53:7) and the prayer we are studying. Isaiah prophesies, "he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth." (ital. mine) Notice how the same Spirit who inspired Isaiah prompts Paul to say in Hebrews 13:20 that God—not "raised," but—"brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep" (ital. mine). The fact that God brought back again from the dead this great Shepherd signifies that the Father had previously brought Him into death as a Substitute, a propitiatory Lamb, for the sins of His sheep. How minutely accurate is the language of Holy Writ and how perfect the harmony—verbal harmony—of the Old and New Testaments!

Peter, in his first Epistle, under the Spirit, appropriated the same wonderful prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus. After referring to Him as the "lamb without blemish and without spot:" by Whom we are redeemed (1 Peter 1:18, 19), he goes on to cite some of the predictive expressions of Isaiah 53: that which speaks of us "as sheep going astray"; that which refers to the saving virtue of Christ’s expiatory passion—"by whose stripes ye were healed"; and the general teaching of the prophecy, that in bearing our sins in His own body on the tree Christ was transacting heavenly business with the righteous Judge as "the Shepherd and Bishop of your [our] souls" (1 Peter 2:24, 25, brackets mine). Thus he was led to expound Isaiah portraying the Savior as a Lamb in death and a Shepherd in resurrection. The excuselessness of the Jews’ ignorance of Christ in this particular office appears still further in that, through yet another of their prophets, it had been announced that God would say, "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the Shepherd. . . " (Zech. 13:7). There God is viewed in His judicial character as being angry with the Shepherd for our sakes: since He bore our sins, justice must take satisfaction from Him. Thus was "the chastisement of our peace" laid upon Him, and the good Shepherd gave His life for the sheep as a satisfaction for the righteous claims of God.