There is a familiar passage of scripture, Matthew 10:16, that is greatly misunderstood. Jesus is sending the apostles out on their first evangelistic mission and he tells them, “I am sending you out as sheep among wolves.” A major part of the misunderstanding comes from the fact that these were grown men, despite referring to them as lambs. Jesus wasn’t sending out lambs, he was sending out rams (adult male sheep), and rams aren’t weak or passive.

Sheep are mentioned in the Bible more than 500 times, more than any other animal. The prominence of sheep in the Bible grows out of two realities. First, sheep were important to the nomads and agricultural life of the Hebrews and similar peoples. Secondly, sheep are used throughout the Bible to symbolically refer to God’s people (us, the Body of Christ, the children of God). In Choose This Day, S. A. Clark shows that to be called something requires us to know something about it, and why the comparison is being made.

This book meditates on the scripture in Matthew that says, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left."