Does a sheep wake in the morning and decide to provoke his wool to grow?  Does he consider man his friend and even a beloved one?  Does he say, “I love the people.  Come wool grow”?  Isn’t it true that the sheep’s, wool which provides for man, grows without the consent of the sheep?

Even the muscles on his bones, which provide meals, grows without the consent of the sheep.  Never once does the sheep consider the boiling water.  He is content to live and to eat.

In Christ we are as sheep for the slaughter.  How many Christians remember this?  Isn’t it true that we love the promise of eternal life, yet despise the nature of who we are called to be?  Haven’t we developed our own religion, labeling it Christianity?  And in this, haven’t we set our own expectations from God?

How quickly and easily the following Scripture is despatched from our memory.  But let us try to remember.

36 “Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were put to death by stoning they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.”  (Hebrews 11)  All of this because they obeyed the will of the Most High God.

There is such a thing as faulse persecution.  The place where we perceive others are against us, while no one pursues us for the things of God.  By our pride and greedy ownership, they come to take away what we have. 

But have we appropriated what is good from Jesus?  Have we gained so much from his willing hand that we are worthy to endure such great opposition from sinful men?  Or have we simply remembered the good promises, and like ghostly religions we have melded into society?

Now is our day to be as those for whom the world is unworthy.  Who is willing to step forward and claim such a place?  Who is willing to live that they may die?

They will not kill you because you are religious.  They will kill you because you are of God.  It is the truth of God men hate so much.  Sincerely, they couldn’t care less about a religious man.  Such a man may be an irritation,  but the truth of God is abhorred.

Jesus compared us to sheep.  But we should not be like wild sheep, free to roam anywhere they please.  We belong to a certain flock.  And of that flock man it is currently permitted to harvest.

By His Grace