THE sheep hear His voice, and they know His voice. How wonderfully simple this is, and not only establishing, but how it keeps the soul from all danger.
It is association with the Lord here on earth, though the voice comes from heaven. It is a blessed thing to know you cannot expect less. If you enter into this line of things you cannot mix it with anything else, it excludes all human wisdom. You could not allow anything to intrude with the voice of God; and the ear that is accustomed to it, is on the look out for it. If our ear is open we are sure to hear it. Everybody has got a path in this world; and though this is a pathless place, yet there is a path. The Lord Jesus did not require a path down here, He was Himself " the way."
The Eastern custom is that the sheep follow the shepherd, he goes before them (they are not driven with a dog as we drive them here); they hear his voice, they know it, and follow him; a stranger they will not follow. Do you think they are going to follow a stranger? They do not raise the question, but they do not doubt the voice of the shepherd, they yield themselves to the voice they know. All that is not of Christ is of another God. " Preserve me, 0 God, for in thee do I put my trust." We see here the Lord Himself was dependent-as man. He trusted in God.
People go miles to see a ruin, but man is a ruin, a magnificent ruin, and that is what we forget, he decks himself out, and it only exposes him, and spoils the ruin. What a thing it would be if we sent to the upholsterer to furnish a ruin!
The shepherd marks the way, and you have nothing to do but to follow; the simplest thing possible, a little child can do it. Christ did not want the way tracked out for Him, but He became flesh, became a man, and that is the reason He had all thrown upon Him by man that He had. To think of all the scorn He had s which 'would never have happened if He had not become a man. He was the perfect Man, a contrast to the ruin on the earth, and suffered for the ruin. It is a wondrous thing that we are allowed to stand with this Man; God sets us along with this Man, so that we are associated with God,:and hence this Psalm can be also applied to us.
To think that God and man are together on this earth. He puts us to stand together, against Satan here. The place the Lord takes is being preserved.
Do you love the saints because you see this or that in ahem that you like, or because they are God's? Do not be Afraid to be found with the saints, for it is in them He takes His delights. "In whom is all my delight." As for the saints their life exists in resurrection, where in His presence, they have fullness of joy for evermore. The Lord give us to know more and more of these blessed things, that we may enjoy them more for our own souls.
W. F. B.