Isaiah 53:5-6
Hi, ya’ll doing!? I begin this blog to share with you that I am a native city girl with a country heart. I love almost everything about the country. What I do not like is that when you have a need or want for anything past 10 P.M., all the stores and fast food chains are closed. Yes, even McDonalds or at least this is what I experienced when I live in the country for two years before returning to the city.
I want to share with you the social behavior of sheep and why GOD told Isaiah to refer to humans as sheep. In all of my forty-plus years of salvation, it never settled well with me as to why the verse is “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone, to his own way”. Why did I not understand this simple verse of scripture when the answer is right there in black and white? What helped my lack of insight, and my misunderstanding of this scripture is the fact that many preachers and teachers both taught the verse wrong. Yes, I wrote that, they were all wrong. None of them came away with this verse and had Holy Spirit show or tell them what the verse is showing us.
The verse is written “All we like sheep have gone astray” stop. All of us not one of us is exempt from being disobedient to our home upbringing. Hopefully, our parents have warned us with our first memorable lesson such as “no you may not have that piece of candy or cookie” only for us to get our tiny little fingers on what it is that we want and get caught not realizing that the evidence is all around our mouth, fingers, and possibly our clothes. This is a great example of us “turning everyone, to his own way” going astray, our wandering away from the proper path that has been set before us. As we get older we wander further away from the laws of our home and that which we are being taught by our school teachers. Well, at least when I was a child my school teachers not only taught curriculum they taught morality as well. Are we beginning to understand and see the scripture clearly now? This has nothing at all to do with stupidity, though it is rather stupid to wander away from the proper guidance of home to follow our own way or that of others before we are at the age of maturity.
And though we begin to wander away in our childhood it continues well into our adult years. We wander into criminal activity, tawdry relationships, addictions, sexual promiscuity, and mental, emotional, and financial poverty. And there are other pastures that people wander into all of which take and try to keep us from being found by the Shepherd.
But praise GOD! We have a SHEPHERD who will look for us regardless of it taking HIM many years to find us. And this has nothing at all to do with HIS not knowing exactly where we are but everything to do with our wanting to be found. Here are some characteristics of sheep that I am certain we will all be able to relate to in our own time of aimlessly wandering about.
- Like sheep we all are prey but unlike sheep, we are too silly to run away from danger.
- Like sheep, we all have shown time and time again our willingness to follow a leader. [Even a leader follows a leader]
- Sheep are more likely far more intelligent than given credit for being. It is the same with humans we are intelligent beings but because we are beaten down by negative words and the acceptance of our community we accept all those hurtful slurs aimed at us so that we do fail in life. So that we find reason after reason to wander away looking for anything better or a way of escape from what we no longer want to endure.
- And lastly, lambs are known to be rejected by their parents for various reasons. Many lambs are orphaned and adopted by other Ewes [adult female sheep; pronounced U’s]
The reason that sheep are given such a bad description of being dumb or stupid is that there are records proving that sheep are known to follow another sheep right off a cliff. Thousands at a time have died in one day following another, those at the bottom if not dead will be crushed by those landing on top of them. The death of sheep when not properly attended to by the under-shepherds who are often hired to help the Shepherd with the sheep has lost in revenue to $100,000 at that very moment. A shepherd who does not take the responsibility of the job seriously is known as a hireling. What is hireling? One who is hired and compensated for wages. Something that most of us have done or still doing. This is not a bad thing as most teach in church. What is bad, however, is that a hireling does not feel the total burden of loss as the one who owns, loves, and depends on all that is put into their desire, dream, and vision. Such a loss can also become burdensome to the entire family financially. But the hireling experiences nothing but the weight of having to tell the Shepherd of the disparity that has occurred.
As parents, we are the Shepherds of our flock. A GOD-like family consists of a married Shepherd [Father] and Shepherdess [Mother] to one another and however many lambs they either produce or adopt. They will care for their lambs and hopefully, these lambs will not stray far from what they are given in love, respect, tenderness, care, and all the many other things we as parents instill into and provide our children in the hope that they will not wander off and get lost in what the world has to offer.
I hope that I have been a help to you regarding these verses of scripture when we read them and see how it all ties together.
The GOOD SHEPHERD/JESUS was wounded and crushed because of our sins; by taking our punishment, HE made us completely well. All of us were like sheep that had wandered off. We had each gone our own way, but the LORD/FATHER gave HIM the punishment we deserved.
AMFBeM © TM