Some people view God as hard and demanding, They see God as a rigid taskmaster who has no heart for people but only for what He wants. God, for them, is to be avoided because He just doesn’t care about people or life or anything except what He wants. So, God is to be feared as a tyrant of some kind, just seeking for his opportunity to pounce on anything that might bring a person pleasure.

Jesus knows nothing about that kind of God. That God is as foreign to Him as is the thought that the man in the moon is considering forming a cheese maker union.

The God Jesus reveals to us is a shepherd (Psalm 23) who leads and restores and guides His people. He is the Shepherd who walks with His people “through the valley of the shadow of death” and who comforts His people with a rod and staff of divine proportions. The God Jesus reveals is the One who is so faithful that He overshadows His people with “goodness and loving-kindness,” and when the time of their stay on earth is over He welcomes them to dwell in His house forever.

God is such a shepherd-God than when Jesus spoke of His own life and ministry He called Himself the “good shepherd” (John 10:11), and says that He loves His people, whom He calls His sheep, so much that He lays down His life for them (John 10:11).

There are powers at work in the world present to steal and kill and destroy, but they are not of the Shepherd-God of Jesus. They are of one Jesus called “The thief” (John10:10). Jesus is of abundant life, and He brings into our lives the heart of God who loves us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).