Isaiah 53:6

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

When our girls were younger we were all great fans of the Australian Christian musician, Colin Buchanan. A significant number of the Bible verses I know by heart are cemented in my memory because of his catchy tunes. So much so that I can’t read or think about today’s verse without mentally adding in the ‘Bah Bah Doo Bah Bah’s at the end of every clause! (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, stick Colin Buchanan Isaiah 53:6 into your search engine of choice and have a listen)

Sheep noises aside, this is a verse that deserves to be in the mind and heart of every Christian. If you were only ever going to learn half a dozen Bible verses in your whole life, I’d suggest that this ought to be one of them. In this one sentence we have the heart of the gospel. We have each chosen to wander away from the Lord. And what has he done in response? Sent a sheepdog to fetch us back to face our punishment? Turned us loose to fend for ourselves in a world of thorns and wolves? No. He laid all our wrongdoing on the Servant, Jesus, so that we don’t have to live under the penalty it rightly deserves.

How could this be anything other than wonderful news? Yet it is only good news for those who know themselves to be wandering sheep. Perhaps for city-dwellers, being considered a sheep doesn’t seem so bad. If our ideas about sheep are drawn from children’s picture books and model farms, we might not mind the comparison. Surely they are cute, clean, cuddly and harmless? But if you’ve had dealings with real live sheep, you may feel differently.

My grandparents were farmers on the Welsh border. I remember when we visited, my brother and I having to join in when sheep were being moved from place to place. Stationed in a gateway or on the yard, we would shout and wave our arms around, attempting to head the sheep towards where they ought to go, and deflect them from where they wanted to go … which was generally anywhere other than the direction intended! Clean, cute and cuddly they were not! In fact, they were often muddy, infuriating and apparently very stupid. Why would you want to go and wedge yourself between a Land Rover and a gatepost, when we’re offering you a huge field full of grass to enjoy? If that’s your experience of sheep, this verse is not so flattering. We all, like mucky, stubborn sheep who have no idea what is good for us, have gone astray. So how wonderfully surprising that the Lord has provided a way for our punishment to fall not on us but on the Servant instead.

However familiar these words are, let’s thank him again for that today, and pray that in our gratitude we would increasingly learn to follow the good shepherd instead of turning away from him.