Preached at Inverness, 18th November, 1952, by the
REV. WM. MACLEAN, M.A., Ness.
In the preceding verse we are told that this was the third time that Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after that He was risen from the dead. The God of Peace had brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that Great Shepherd of the Sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant. It is as the Great Shepherd of the Sheep that the Lord Jesus is here addressing His servant Peter, one of the under-shepherds of the flock. We may, therefore, notice a few things concerning (i) the Great Shepherd of the Sheep; (ii) His flock, and in His flock we read that there are lambs and sheep; (iii) the searching question which Christ is here putting to Peter, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these?” (iv) Christ’s command to Peter, “Feed my lambs . . . , etc.”
(i) The Great Shepherd of the Sheep
It was the God of Peace who brought again from the dead that Great Shepherd of the Sheep. “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end” (Jer. xxix, 11). The God of Peace had thoughts of peace and love from all eternity toward a number which no man can number of Adam’s lost race. In His mere good pleasure He chose them, and on their behalf entered into a covenant of peace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery into which the Fall had brought them, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer. And “the only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the Eternal Son of God became man and so was and continueth to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person for ever.”
(a) He Himself declares: “I was set up from everlasting from the beginning or ever the earth was.” He was set up in the eternal counsels as the Great Shepherd of the Sheep, as Head and Mediator of the Covenant of Grace, and as the only Redeemer of God’s elect.
(b) The One Who was set up or appointed as the Great Shepherd of the Sheep was the Second Person of the ever-adorable Trinity—the only begotten Son of the Father in Truth and in Love. Christ’s Sonship is the very basis and foundation of His office as Shepherd or Redeemer. His Sonship, too, is the Church’s one foundation. God the Father hath declared concerning Him, “This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” And He is well pleased with Him as His only begotten Son. His Sonship is not a created Sonship. That would make Christ a creature, which is the blasphemy of Arians, Socinians and the sect known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. His Sonship is eternal, and however incomprehensible this relationship may be to reason, saving faith can and does rest with delight in Christ as the only begotten of the Father. A Christ who is not the Son of God by eternal generation is a false Christ and not the Christ of God.
(c) As the Great Shepherd of the sheep He came into the world in the fullness of time. “Christ the Son of God became man by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her yet without sin.” And in the human nature on Calvary’s accursed tree in terms of the Covenant of Grace He willingly offered Himself a sacrifice to satisfy all the demands of law and justice. “I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.” He set His face as a flint, and in love to His Father’s glory, and to those given Him in covenant He came under the stroke of truth and justice inflexible. “Awake O sword, against my Shepherd and against the man that is my fellow saith the Lord of Hosts; smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.” As the Surety and Substitute of His people Christ died that they might live. “I am come,” He said, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” He sealed the eternal Covenant of Grace with His Blood, made reconciliation for iniquity and brought in an everlasting righteousness. And as proof thereof the God of Peace brought again from the dead that Great Shepherd of the Sheep.
(d) He ascended on high, having led captivity captive. He received gifts for men, even for the rebellious that God the Lord in midst of them might dwell. And among the gifts of His purchasing as the apostle expounds in his Epistle to the Ephesians are prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, “for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” These gifts He has promised to give to His Church—pastors after His own heart to feed them with knowledge and with understanding. The government is upon His shoulders. All power in heaven and in earth are His, and to those whom He sends forth with the ministry of reconciliation, He has given His promise, “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world. Amen.” By His Word and Spirit He blesses and gives countenance to the ordinance of the ministry, so that the labours of His servants are not in vain in the Lord. At the right hand He is interceding on behalf of His Cause in the world, and the day is coming when the Cause of His Glory shall fill the earth as the waters cover the face of the deep.
(e) He is to come again at the last day in the glory of His Father, and will then make a final and eternal separation between the sheep and the goats. To His sheep He shall say, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, “Depart from me ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
We are not now before the Throne of Judgment, but invited to the Throne of Grace. From Israel’s Shepherd who dwells between the cherubim and who has compassion on the ignorant and on them who are out of the way the invitation anew comes forth: “Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.”
(ii) Christ’s Flock
Christ’s sheep are those given Him by the Father—the whole election of grace. “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them me.” For them He came, and for them He died, and for them He rose again, and for them He intercedes at the right hand of the Majesty on high. His sheep or people come into this world lost and undone, children of wrath even as others. They go astray on the mountains of sin and vanity, heedless of the gathering storm of divine wrath and indignation that will sweep careless, Christless sinners at death into the depths of eternal despair and damnation. As the good Shepherd He seeks them out. Not a hoof of them shall be left in Egypt. In the parable of the lost sheep we have brought before us Christ as the good Shepherd seeking by His Word and Spirit the sheep that is lost. “He goes after that which was lost” we read, “until He find it”; for Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost. Earth and hell may oppose but nothing will frustrate His purposes of mercy to find the sheep that is lost. “And when He hath found it, He layeth it on His shoulders rejoicing.” The words suggest to us the condition in which the sheep is. She is not in a condition to be led or driven. Her condition is such that unless the Shepherd will lift and carry her she will die where she has fallen. She is helpless and hopeless. That is true spiritually. The sinner sought out, or, in other words, the seeking sinner is brought to the end of his resources. In the light of the Glory of God as revealed in the Law, he sees himself not only lost, but utterly unable to rescue himself. “When the commandment came sin revived and I died.” In the moment the sinner died to the law as a covenant, in that moment he lived to Him Who is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. What life and peace entered into the soul slain by the law when Christ was revealed. “A willing people in Thy day of power shall come to Thee.” It was the arm of the Shepherd that is full of power and His hand that is great in might that lifted the sheep on to His shoulders. “If the Son shall make you free ye shall be free indeed.” The soul that day was freed from the curse of a broken law, and by the door Christ Jesus entered into the fold of a state of grace, where it is being sanctified and made meet for the fold of glory on Mount Zion above.
There are marks on Christ’s sheep. They are a sin-confessing people. It was after the sheep was found that we read that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Evangelical repentance—that godly sorrow which worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of flows from a saving knowledge of Christ. I heard the late Kenneth Matheson, Dingwall, once say on the question that the publican had the prayer, “God be merciful to me a sinner” to his dying day. The good Shepherd leads His sheep into the pastures of the 51st Psalm. Their confession is, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way.” But their hope for eternity is not based on their confession of sin nor on their forsaking of sin, but on Christ’s finished work. The eye of their faith is toward the Cross. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.” “My sheep,” said Christ, “hear my voice and they follow Me.” They follow Him in His doctrines, for to His sheep they are the words of eternal life. They follow Him in His precepts. They know the law to be holy, just and good, and that they are carnal sold under sin. But their cry is, “O, that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes.” They follow Him in His ordinances. It is the sheep of Christ who have the confession, “For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in tents of wickedness.” They seek to follow Him in His example, for He left them an example that they should follow in His steps.
In the fold of grace He makes them lie down in the green pastures of His Truth, and leads them beside the still waters of His presence. He also feeds them with trials and tribulations and afflictions. “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer I have overcome the world.” In the Revelation John got a view of the redeemed of the Lord on Mount Zion above. “What are these,” he asked, “which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came they?” And he was told, “These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb . . . They shall hunger no more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” And their song shall eternally be, “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
(iii) Christ’s Question to Peter
Christ asked Peter this question three times. Three times he had denied Him. Of this he had been warned by Christ. “Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and when thou art converted strengthen the brethren.” We can trace the steps by which Peter was led into Satan’s sieve. In Gethsemane’s garden where it was his duty to watch and pray, he slept and fell into temptation. But he wist it not. When the soldiers came to arrest Christ, Peter drew his sword and cut off the right ear of Malchus the high priest’s servant. One would say that his zeal for Christ at the time was great, but his zeal proved to be not of grace but of the flesh. How damaging to the Cause of Christ can the sword be in the hand of carnal zeal! What wounds and divisions it makes! Three of the evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke record that Peter followed Christ afar off to the high priest’s palace. It is John, as he himself tells, who secured Peter’s admission. The night was cold, but instead of enduring hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, Peter sat down to warm himself along with the open enemies of Christ, and the very persons against whom he had drawn his sword. His personal comforts would appear to be more to him than the cross of Christ. Step by step he is led into the sieve. Satan now is given permission as he desired to have Peter in order that he might sift him as wheat. Peter for the time being is given over to Satan, and Satan takes advantage to the full of the opportunity granted him. And were it not for Christ’s intercession in connection with the temptation, “Hitherto thou shalt go and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,” who knows how much farther Peter might have gone! And O, how far he did go, when he cursed and swore and said, “I know not this man of whom ye speak.” In the light of the length to which an apostle beloved went in denial when in Satan’s sieve, how much we need daily the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.” To what awful depths of degradation and shame we could sink if left to ourselves. “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” Christ looked upon Peter, and he went out and wept bitterly. He went out from the place of denial, and from the company of those whose meat and drink it was to deny and to deride the Lord of Glory. His separation and tears had their source in Christ’s intercession, and were proofs that his faith failed not.
This searching question which the Saviour addressed three times to Peter in connection with his commission to feed His lambs and His sheep, shows that love to Christ and to His Cause must be the prevailing principle and motive in all who are pastors of the flock. It implies, too, the warning that self-love, self-confidence, self-interest, self-glory, is the highway into Satan’s sieve, and from thence to broken bones and bitter tears. “Lovest thou Me more than these,” are the balances of the sanctuary in which those who profess to be the servants of the Lord are weighed. Judas with all his apostolic gifts had no love to Christ nor to His Cause. He loved the bag and what was put therein. What Judas had in view, with all his pretensions to the contrary was what he could get out of the Cause of Christ, and not how much he could put in. When the testing time came, he was found wanting. He, too, went out, but with his back on the Cause and on the friends of Christ; with remorse in his heart, the sorrow of the world which worketh death, he was driven away in his wickedness until he went to his own place. How solemn it is that Christ declares that many who preach in His name, and in His name, cast out devils and do many wonderful works shall hear, in effect, the sentence, “Tekel, thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”
(iv) Christ’s Command to Peter
Peter although he got repentance and forgiveness was no doubt exercised in his mind as to whether he would be reinstated in his office as pastor. What balm these words of Christ, “Feed My Lambs,” and “Feed My Sheep” must have been to His soul. Christ is committing anew to Peter the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven—the key or knowledge to teach and to instruct, and the key of discipline to rule and guide. It is in the measure in which he would have love to Christ and to His Cause that he would feed the lambs and the sheep.
The feeding implies, as the two different verbs in the Greek make clear, the providing the flock with spiritual food, and the tending and guarding the flock from dangers within and without. The pastor must not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. He must preach law and gospel, be instant in season, out of season reproving, rebuking, exhorting with all long-suffering and doctrine. Paul exhorts the elders of Ephesus to feed the church of God in their midst which He had purchased with His own blood. To feed there means to shepherd and to guard. “For I know this,” He declares, “that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you not sparing the flock.” The flock they must guard from the wolves of strife and schism—men who speak perverse things to draw disciples after them, and who scatter the flock. Love to Christ will induce the faithful shepherd to seek to shield the flock from all such.
The evils against which the worthy fathers of our Church were enabled by the grace of God to raise a banner on the side of truth in Scotland must be exposed. These evils are enumerated in the Deed of Separation:—Voluntaryism, Arminianism, Modernism, and the defiling of the pure stream of New Testament worship by the introduction of uninspired hymns and organs in the worship of the sanctuary.
The warning given in an age when truth was fallen in the street and equity could not enter was never more needed to be given than now. “Say ye not, a confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, a confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid.” We must not say a confederacy to the many conventions of our day like the Strathpeffer Convention and the Keswick Convention which savour strongly of Arminianism and which promote the spurious growth of the Moody and Sankey type of godliness, nor to the International Council of Christian Churches which in the balances of truth is found wanting as a faithful custodian of the distinctive doctrines of grace. And furthermore, in connection with the evil of Arminianism it is the duty of pastors to guard their flock from the ravages made by Arminianism through the agency of the Faith Mission in our Highlands and Islands.
Professor Renwick said on the floor of the Free Church Assembly that the testimony of the Faith Mission was the testimony of the Free Church. The testimony of the Faith Mission is not the testimony of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. “Some call us ‘Seceders,'” wrote the late worthy father of our Church, the Rev. Donald MacFarlane Dingwall, in his diary, “but we are not Seceders. The word ‘secede’ according to the literal meaning is to step aside from a position. We have not stepped aside from the position of the Church of Scotland for centuries. It is those who have left that position who are seceders from God’s Word and worship.” (Memoir, p. 55.)
Three persons eminent for godliness in the Church made known the truth they got relative to the question of union with the Free Church. They each received the same portion of truth. Mr. Archibald Crawford told the late Rev. Neil Cameron that the truth he got as to our duty towards the present Free Church was, “Let them return unto Thee, but return not Thou unto them” (Jer. xv, 9). Mrs. MacKay Strathy, the saintly mother of the late Professor J. R. MacKay, also informed Mr. Cameron that she had received the same portion. The third was Angus Gray of Lairg. “These,” writes Mr. Cameron, “were three most sincere and honest Christians. The one did not know that the other had that portion of God’s Word, when each one made known that he or she got it from the Lord. No one could charge them as being enthusiasts. Each one of them was sober-minded above most of their contemporary followers of the Lord.” The command, “Let them return unto Thee; but return not Thou unto them,” we wholeheartedly believe, to contain the mind of Christ and therefore our duty with respect to the Free Church. The signs of the times confirm, if confirmation there need be, that the Lord wrought deliverance for His cause in Scotland in 1893. And “hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”
“The Israelites were brought into the possession of their inheritance, not by Moses, but by Joshua, so the saints are brought to heaven, not by the works of law, but by Jesus.”—John Gill.