On Shepherds

I love reading through the old testament and finding a passage that clearly and vividly points to Jesus. Some of the prophesies about Jesus are pretty vague. But there are certainly plenty of very obvious, clear ones.

Read Ezekiel 34:1-16.
"The word of the Lord came to me: 'Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have no strengthened the weak or healed th sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered all over the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, O shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.

For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. I will tend them in a food pasture, and the mountain heights of Istael will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.'""

For the entire time I read this passage, I couldn't stop smiling and thinking about Jesus.
In John 10:11 Jesus told the Pharisees,
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."

This is really interesting because Pharisees spent their entire lives memorizing scripture- including Ezekiel, the third of the major prophets. They would have been able to instantly recall that, about 500 years ago, God had spoken to his people and said that he was throwing out the shepherds. And not only that, but He, Himself, would take over the roll. Assuming that the Pharisees recognized themselves as the "shepherds" in the prophesy, the priests, the ones in charge of leading God's chosen people, his sheep, then by Jesus calling himself "the good shepherd", he was stating himself to be God incarnate.
Mind blowing.

And it's so true. God knew that the laws and priests were crummy shepherds, so he came down to fix it himself. Jesus is our shepherd, he tends to us, and searches after the lost, bringing them home strikingly like the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15.

Reading through the Old Testament is one of the coolest ways to affirm Christianity as truth. It would be humanly impossible to write a book with so many different "authors" over such a long time period and have it result in the perfect handbook to Life.