Matt 9:35–10:1 — Shepherd of the Scattered Sheep

Matthew 9:36 says that when Jesus saw the crowds, “he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Although Matthew does not state it directly, Jesus’ compassion expresses his role as the Shepherd they need. He sees the scattered condition of the sheep and reveals himself as their strong Shepherd.

The Gospel of the Kingdom

Verse 35 gives a summary of the preceding chapters: “Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.” This nearly repeats Matthew 4:23 verbatim. Jesus proclaims the gospel of the kingdom, and the healings that accompany his preaching visibly signify that gospel.

What is “the gospel of the kingdom”? It is the good news that the kingdom promised in the Old Testament has arrived. The prophets looked forward to the restoration of God’s people and the new creation blossoming like a rose in the desert. Yet sin and death remain, and the visible new creation has not appeared in its fullness. In what sense, then, has the kingdom come?

The kingdom has arrived because its King has arrived. Jesus is the Messiah and kingdom-bearer. The kingdom still points forward to the day when the dead will rise, sin and evil will be destroyed, and the new creation will appear in its fullness. Nevertheless, the powers of that coming age have already entered history in Christ. Through him, resurrection life reaches back into the present as he spreads healing and restoration wherever he goes.

In this age, before the end of history, the kingdom comes chiefly in the form of salvation and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus declares to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” and proves that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He says that he came not to call the righteous but sinners. His miracles signify the kingdom’s presence and reveal the authority of its King, who brings salvation, healing, forgiveness, and restoration.

The ten miracles in Matthew 8–9, nine of which are healings, have emphasized Christ’s identity as the Son of God, Messiah, Savior, and kingdom-bearer. Yet this summary introduces another dimension of his work. Jesus is not merely healing isolated individuals to prove his power or illustrate aspects of salvation. He is gathering the lost sheep of Israel and forming a new Israel centered upon himself.

The discipleship passages interspersed among the miracles have already hinted at this gathering. Jesus summons would-be followers to count the cost: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”; and, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” He calls Matthew from the tax booth, and Matthew then gathers tax collectors and sinners to feast with Christ. Each scene shows Jesus calling lost sheep into his kingdom.

The crowds also belong to this gathering movement. They may not suffer from demon possession, paralysis, blindness, or another extraordinary affliction, but they hear Jesus’ preaching and witness his works. He is gathering his people and reconstituting the Israel of God around himself.

The Scattered Condition of the Sheep

Verse 36 says, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless.” English translations render these two words in different ways. The ESV has “harassed and helpless,” emphasizing difficult external circumstances. The NASB has “distressed and downcast,” emphasizing an internal psychological condition. Both dimensions are present.

The first word may be translated “harassed,” “distressed,” or “troubled.” It is used in the accounts of Jairus’s daughter when messengers announce that she has died and say, “Why trouble the Teacher any further?” The term describes inward distress: the people are troubled, discouraged, and dispirited.

The second word literally means “thrown down.” Imagine throwing a handful of rice onto a hard floor; the grains scatter in every direction. This picture corresponds to the frequent Old Testament description of sheep scattered across the mountains because they have no shepherd. The crowds are both troubled and scattered. They lack spiritual direction, wander aimlessly, and remain vulnerable to predators.

Shepherds Who Fed Themselves

Matthew’s description subtly criticizes Israel’s religious leaders. The people have priests, Pharisees, and teachers of the law, yet they remain like sheep without a shepherd. Their leaders are shepherds in name only because they have failed to provide the care God requires.

Ezekiel 34 condemns the leaders whose failure contributed to Israel’s exile:

Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? . . . The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts.

Israel’s kings and priests failed to feed the people with God’s Word. Isaiah 5:13 says, “My people go into exile for lack of knowledge.” The surrounding context identifies this as a rejection of the Word of God. The leaders who should have taught God’s law and gospel did not fulfill their calling. The people consequently became leaderless, disunited, aimless, and discouraged.

This language also develops Matthew’s motif of continuing exile. Israel had returned to the land and rebuilt the temple, but the people remained in spiritual exile. They were still troubled and scattered like sheep without a shepherd.

Ahab and the Sheep Without a Shepherd

The exact image appears in 1 Kings 22. King Ahab of the northern kingdom joined King Jehoshaphat of Judah in a plan to reclaim territory from Syria. Ahab was a wicked king who promoted Baal worship, while Jehoshaphat was generally faithful and insisted that they first seek counsel from a true prophet of the Lord.

Ahab assembled prophets who unanimously predicted victory. Jehoshaphat recognized that they were false and asked whether a genuine prophet remained. Ahab reluctantly mentioned Micaiah, complaining that Micaiah never prophesied anything favorable about him.

When Micaiah was summoned, he finally announced the truth: “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd.” At one level, this foretold Ahab’s death in battle. An archer released an arrow that struck Ahab, and the army scattered after its king fell.

At a deeper level, Micaiah described Israel’s spiritual condition. Ahab was not a righteous shepherd. Israel’s kings were responsible to uphold true worship, preserve the temple, tear down idolatrous altars, and lead the people in righteousness. Ahab instead promoted idolatry and wickedness. Under such a king, Israel was spiritually scattered even before the army dispersed on the battlefield.

The recurring principle in Kings is that as the king goes, so go the people. A righteous king leads the nation toward true worship; a wicked king leads it into idolatry. To be “like sheep without a shepherd” therefore means that the people lack a righteous king.

The Strong Shepherd of the Sheep

Jesus is the righteous King and strong Shepherd whom the sheep need. He sees beyond their physical afflictions to their spiritual condition. They are downcast, aimless, and scattered, and this moves him to compassion. He is not indifferent to their confusion or vulnerability.

As Donald Hagner explains, what stirs Jesus’ compassion is “the great spiritual need of the people, whose lives have no center, whose existence seems aimless.” They resemble the spokes of a bicycle wheel pointing in every direction without an axle to unite and order them.

Jesus fulfills the prophetic promise of an eschatological Shepherd who will gather the new Israel. Ezekiel 34 continues:

As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. . . . I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. . . . And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.

Micah 5:2–4 similarly promises that a ruler will come from Bethlehem and “stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord.” Matthew has already quoted this prophecy in chapter 2. Jesus is that strong Shepherd, the promised Davidic King.

His strength ultimately appears in laying down his life to rescue the sheep from their sins. Near the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus quotes the prophecy, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” At his arrest and death, the disciples scatter. Yet this scattering is temporary. After his resurrection, he gathers them again, and through their preaching he brings the new flock of God into being.

The Plentiful Harvest

In verses 37–38 the metaphor shifts from shepherding to harvesting: “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’” The imagery moves from pastoral care to evangelistic gathering, although the two should not be sharply divided. Evangelism is one aspect of the Shepherd’s work of gathering his flock.

“The harvest is plentiful” means that many people are ready to be gathered into the kingdom. Jesus’ first response to the crowds’ need is to command prayer. Before sending the disciples, he tells them to ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his field. Chapter 10 then provides the answer to that prayer as Jesus commissions the Twelve to extend his ministry.

The harvest image corrects a common misconception about evangelism. Evangelism is not fundamentally an attempt to manipulate, entice, or argue people into becoming Christians. The harvest is already ripe. It does not need to be manufactured; it needs to be gathered. The Spirit prepares and converts, while Christ’s servants proclaim the gospel and call people into the kingdom.

Jesus’ image of fishing carries the same idea. Modern readers may picture an individual angler carefully selecting bait and laboring to attract a single fish. The first disciples, however, worked with nets among schools of fish. They cast and drew in the net. In both images, the emphasis rests upon gathering what God has prepared, not upon the evangelist’s ingenuity.

This commission anticipates the church’s mission after Christ’s death and resurrection. The disciples will first go to the lost sheep of Israel. At the end of Matthew, the risen Christ will send the church to all nations to baptize and teach everything he commanded.

Jesus Calls the Twelve to Himself

Matthew 10:1 says, “He called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.” Jesus gives them authority to continue the very ministry described in 9:35. They will proclaim his gospel of the kingdom and accompany that message with visible signs of healing and deliverance. By sending the Twelve, Jesus amplifies his message and extends its reach through the towns and villages of Israel.

Before sending them out, however, he calls them to himself. The wording is emphatic: he gathers them to himself and then grants them authority. This is the opposite of scattering. The sheep have been dispersed because they lack a shepherd; Jesus gathers the disciples around himself as the nucleus of the new Israel.

The number twelve represents the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus stands at the center, calling the people of God to himself and reconstituting Israel through the ministry of the Twelve.

This is not “replacement theology,” as though God had discarded Israel and substituted an unrelated church. Jesus reconstitutes Israel around himself. The new Israel of God consists of those whom he calls from their scattered condition into faith and fellowship with himself. The church does not replace Israel; the Messiah gathers and renews God’s covenant people around his own person.

Christ Is the Center

The world remains filled with people who are aimless and confused, like sheep without a shepherd. Gender confusion, political turmoil, depression, suicide, and the loss of meaning testify to lives without a true center or purpose.

Confusion also afflicts professing Christians. Some replace the gospel with a social gospel. Others react by preaching the law as though the law were the corrective and the gospel. Yet law and gospel are distinct, and the gospel is not merely another presentation of demands. Without clarity concerning Christ’s life-giving gospel, even churchgoers can remain discouraged, aimless, and scattered beneath leaders who resemble Ahab or the Pharisees.

Christ is the answer to this condition. He is the axle that holds the spokes together. Without a center, the spokes of a wheel fall in every direction; gathered around Christ, the people of God are united and ordered. The Twelve gather around him like spokes around an axle, becoming the beginning of a renewed covenant people.

To say that Christ is the answer may sound simplistic, but it is true because Christ is real. He truly came in history, lived a perfect life of obedience, died on the cross to take away sins, and rose bodily from the dead. The tomb is empty. The apostles witnessed these events and left the Scriptures as their testimony. More than two thousand years later, we hear that testimony and join the troubled and scattered crowds who come to their Shepherd.

The Old Testament king was called not only to lead God’s people in righteousness and true worship but also to represent them. Christ alone is the perfectly righteous King in David’s line. His righteousness is credited to our account. He does not feed himself, trample the sheep, or burden them with law without gospel. He lays down his life for them, reckons his righteousness to them, and transforms them through his sanctifying power.

Therefore, keep your eyes fixed upon Jesus, the founder and perfecter of faith. He is the compassionate and strong Shepherd who gathers troubled and scattered sheep, feeds them with the gospel, leads them in righteousness, and sends his servants to gather the plentiful harvest.