Ezekiel 34:14, commentary and pictures

God Himself will feed His flock in a good and fat pasture and cause them to lie down in a good fold for rest and safety upon the high mountains of Israel, and He will keep His beautiful flock so that they are not spoiled. The sheep are men, a symbol of the people of God, and the promise means that He is their God with them. The shepherd figure had significance for all the people and was understood by the priests and rulers who expounded the Old Testament Scriptures when Christ spoke as the good Shepherd.

The promise belongs to God's pledge after unfaithful shepherds fail, to search out His sheep scattered in the cloudy and dark day and deliver them out of all places where they were scattered, to bring them out from the people and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land, and to feed them by the mountains and rivers and inhabited places. This feeding means seeking the lost, bringing again the driven away and the straying, binding up the broken, strengthening the sick, caring patiently for the straying, afflicted, young, and weak, and making with them a covenant of peace. It stands in contrast to shepherds who should have acted as shepherds and been a blessing to the needy and helpless and to those needing comfort, sympathy, and tender regard, but did not minister to them, having no fear and love of God and no true commission, so that heaven placed no seal on their work. That failure is connected with leaders who reject truth that calls for self-denial and disregard God's law.

Read alongside Isaiah 58, faithful restoration under the promise includes feeding the flock with truth and keeping the Sabbath. The promise gives a special call to the erring, the weak and trembling, and even those who have apostatized from the truth to come fully into the fold, and it lays a special duty on others to go and search for these lost sheep and bring them back to the fold. The chapter gives what each person needs to know individually of what the Spirit says to the churches and what the Lord requires, to be spiritually discerned through watchfulness, prayer, trust in the living Word, willing consecration, daily conversion to God, and forming a character after the divine similitude. This is in order to be prepared with joy to meet the Lord when He comes in the clouds of heaven with power and glory, and to avoid placing oneself under the influence of one who has made his choice to apostatize unless his actions show he has changed that choice and done that which is lawful and right.

For the colored people of the South the promise means deliverance from oppression, darkness, and ignorance into marvelous light, making the desert places of the South as the garden of God and a blessing, with showers of blessing in season through the outpouring of His Spirit on multiplied missionaries and volunteers who repair past injury and labor in the strength of Christ, to the rejoicing of heaven. When a man God chose as physician exalts self to be as God, follows ambition, repeats Satan's suggestions, makes it hard for ministers, brings confusion, neglects the vineyard, discourages workers for years, and creates dissension and strife by crooked action and methods, the promise means God will take His flock out of his hands, keep them safe, give increased light and evidence, and appoint over them true teachers and faithful physicians. Even then the unfaithful one will not heed, acknowledge God, or reform but changes methods to work to the same object. Though the sheep are now scattered, they are about to be gathered to a good pasture, with the gathering very near at the soon coming of the same Jesus who ascended into heaven, leading to meeting all the blood-washed throng in the city of God, marching through the gates into the city singing the song of Moses and the Lamb, bearing palms of victory and wearing crowns of glory.