Perhaps you’ve heard the kids at church sing this song:
I just wanna be a sheep,
Baa baa baa baa baa.
I just wanna be a sheep,
Baa baa baa baa baa
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
I just wanna be a sheep,
Baa baa baa baa baa!
“I Just Wanna Be A Sheep” hardly seems like a church revival song. We humor the kids as they innocently sing, “Baa, baa, baa.”
My church recently finished a study about The Lamb of God. One of the books we used was “A Shepherd Looks at the Lamb of God” by Phillip Keller. A longtime shepherd, Phillip flipped our thinking about cute little lambs with these words:
In the traditional life of the eastern shepherds, the stray sheep were always retrieved and gathered up by the shepherd’s pet lamb. Every shepherd owned a special, hand-reared pet lamb who was considered almost as affectionately as his own children.
Like a veritable shadow, wherever the shepherd went, the pet lamb followed. Wherever he walked, the pet lamb walked. And whenever the shepherd set out into the wild pastures, the upland range or rough hill country to gather his stray stragglers, full responsibility for their safe return rested on the pet lamb.
It was the pet lamb who came alongside the lost ones, who fed side by side with them, who called to them, who influenced them to follow him gently back to the master’s fold. It was the pet lamb, who, at the close of day as the sun set over the western hills, came home in the master’s footprints, faithfully bringing the strays with him.
The term ‘bellwether’ refers to this special lamb (who often wears a bell), bringing the stray sheep back to the fold, back to the shepherd. The divine Bellwether is The Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Even out of the most difficult circumstances to which our own waywardness and selfishness have brought us, He gently but firmly nudges us in the right direction. In love and compassion and care, He comes to call us back to God our Father and home where we belong.
Jesus — the Bellwether Lamb — leads, nudges and watches over you and me. He leads us back to God — the Good Shepherd.
And then someone in our study group said, “Shouldn’t we be bellwether lambs, too?” And suddenly the warm fuzzy idea of Jesus being our Bellwether Lamb became a riveting personal challenge.
If Jesus leads me home to my Heavenly Father, I must, in gratitude, become a bellwether lamb to a friend or family member that is facing difficulties or has lost their way.
Ephesians 2:8-10 lays it out pretty simple — For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
God’s grace, demonstrated on the Cross, was the ultimate act of our Bellwether Lamb. He restored our connection with God, our Good Shepherd. And as we find ourselves safely in God’s Fold, he reminds us that we were created and saved for good works. We were created to be bellwether lambs to those around us.
So perhaps, then, “I Just Wanna Be a Sheep,” should really be the heart song of every Christian! Not just our kids . . .