THE CROWD WHO LOST THEIR SHEPHERD

THE CROWD WHO LOST THEIR SHEPHERD

Look for one moment upon the multitudes around, the GREAT SHEPHERD LESS CROWD. That was Christ's picturing of them, sheep having no shepherd. How perplexed, how disappointed many of them must have been that day. For three years they had followed a Leader, a Deliverer, fol­lowed Him foolishly, it is true, not from high motive, and never able thoroughly to appreciate Him. Moved by the signs of His power, and drawn by the tenderness of His compassion, they have followed still, though imperfectly and now the end of it is His crucifixion. They had hoped that “it was He Who should redeem Israel," (Luke 24:21) and now He is nailed to the Roman, cursed, tree. Jesus had spoken of them as being without a shepherd, and many of them had come to hope that perhaps He was their Shepherd. Oh, could they but see, He was indeed the good Shepherd, and in the mystery of that awful Cross, He was laying down His life for them. Soon they will come back, by tens, by hundreds, and by thousands. Never tell me that Christ's ministry was a failure. It has some­times been said that He only gathered about one hundred and twenty disciples. But let it never be forgotten that the results of the preaching of Jesus were gathered upon the day of Pentecost, and gathered wherever those men afterwards proclaimed His death and resurrection. In the days of His public ministry He had done what He is now doing in the present day. He gathered a few in associations with Himself, as He is now calling out the Church to Himself; but He prepared thousands of others to be gathered in, in the fullness of time, as He is now preparing the whole world for the preaching of the Gospel that shall succeed the present dispensation and economy; the day of great tribulation. And of those multitudes around the Cross there can be no doubt that soon many came to know Him as the good Shepherd Who had laid down His life for the sheep.