As many Sunday school teachers do, Miss Johnson pulled together her young students so they could prepare to memorize Psalm 23. She approached the pastor wanting to have the students present their memory work to the whole congregation on Sunday morning a month from that date.

Little Bobby was initially excited about the memorization and being able to recite his part before the church. He wanted to invite his grandmother to watch him do it. Unfortunately Bobby froze when it came to memorizing just about anything. He tried and tried. His parents helped him but he just couldn’t remember the psalm. After a month of practice he could not remember any more than “The Lord is my shepherd.”

That fateful Sunday arrived. The small class walked single file up to the front of the church. All were smiling except for Bobby. He was petrified. Bobby was the first to recite the psalm before the church but by then his nerves made his entire mind go blank. The teacher crouched down in front of him and held the microphone to his face. Bobby suddenly smiled and said, “The Lord is my shepherd and that’s all I need to know.”

Truly, little Bobby was right. The Lord is our shepherd and once we understand that relationship to our God, to Jesus, then we have a good operational basis for our faith. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. In the group listening to him, everyone would understand that imagery. Once again, Jesus started with something they knew and then moved on to applying a spiritual point to it. It was important that they understood that he was a good shepherd. Why? Because, very simply, there were some bad ones.

A bad shepherd, often termed a hireling, would at times be hired to watch the sheep. When a wild animal, a wolf, or a lion as in the case of David in the Old Testament, would come along to have themselves a bit of a mutton dinner, the hireling would run. The hireling was hired to protect the sheep but to this bad shepherd that didn’t go so far as to go face to face with a wild beast. You could hear them as they ran crying out, “Feet don’t fail me now!”

How completely the opposite of this is the shepherd in the Parable of the Lost Sheep that Jesus told in Matthew 18:12-13. “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the 99 on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the 99 that did not wander off.” That is how a good shepherd was portrayed.

You may remember the story from 1 Samuel of David’s trip to take his brothers food when he saw Goliath taunting the Jewish soldiers. King Saul was shocked when David offered to fight the giant. David’s only training had been as a shepherd. What did he know about fighting giants? In his answer we see, once again, the spirit of a good shepherd.

“But David said to Saul, ‘Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it, and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine” (I Samuel 17:34-37).

A good shepherd protects his sheep. The disciples were well acquainted with the role of a shepherd. They also would have remembered the parable of the lost sheep and certainly this story of David was told to them as children. A good shepherd, they would know, protects his sheep.

When Jesus told them he was the Good Shepherd he added that he was the kind of good shepherd that would lay down his life for his sheep. If attacked by a lion or a bear, our good shepherd would not run, not give up protection even if it was a battle to the death.

Jesus was the kind of shepherd who would lay down his life for the sheep. When Jesus told them this truth, the disciples did not understand the prophetic nature of his comments. For at that time Jesus was marching toward the cross to do exactly what the Good Shepherd promised them he would do. He was going to lay down his life for the sheep. There is no sign that any of them understood at that time that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, would offer himself up as the Passover lamb for the forgiveness of our sins. I don’t believe they understood that but it was certainly easy to grasp that Jesus promised to be their good shepherd.

Not only does the good shepherd protect his sheep but he also said, “I am the Good Shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” That is certainly a hard thought to process. Jesus said he knew his sheep. How is that possible? With around eight trillion people in the world, God claims to know me, my thoughts, my hopes, my plans, my pains, and my sorrows.

Instead of looking at this as a wonderful and hopeful thing, we all, at times, feel so insignificant. We don’t see how our little bit of service to our Lord, or our prayers or our labors for him amount to much. We don’t know if God is aware of our struggles, our loneliness, our grief, or our losses. We don’t know. We just don’t know.

Yet Jesus told us in no uncertain terms that God knows us, each one of us. In Jeremiah 29:11, the Lord tells us, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Not only does the Good Shepherd protect, and know us personally but he does have a plan for our lives. We are not insignificant to God. You matter to God. You belong to his flock.

As Matthew 10:29-31 says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

The Good Shepherd knows his sheep down to the numbers of hairs on your head and some of you are making his job easier with your hair loss. He knows when you fall. He knows you.

On the flip side, our scripture reading says that his sheep knew his voice. We have talked a lot about our need to be in a relationship with our lord. We know that Christ laid down his life for his herd. We also know, too, that a good shepherd would leave the flock to search for a lost sheep. Are you one of the lost sheep? Have you wondered away from the herd? Are you struggling to hear his voice? Maybe today is the day that you need wander back toward the Good Shepherd. God will rejoice that his wandering sheep has been found. What assurances do you have? You have God’s promises and God always keeps his promises.

Remember, the Lord is my shepherd and that is all I need to know.

Amen.