For he is our God
God over all, blessed for ever, truly and properly God, and therefore to be worshipped: "our God"; in whom we have interest, who became our head and surety in covenant; took upon him our nature, is our "Immanuel", God with as, which increases the obligation to worship him; these are the words of New Testament saints:
and we are the people of his pasture;
for whom he has provided a good pasture; whom he leads into it, and feeds in it, even by the ministry of the word and ordinances:
and the sheep of his hand;
made and fashioned by his hand, both in a natural and spiritual sense; led and guided by his hand, as a flock by the hand of the shepherd; are in his hand, being put there for safety by his Father; and upheld by it, and preserved in it, and from whence none can pluck them; see ( Deuteronomy 33:3 ) ( John 10:28 John 10:29 ) receiving such favours from him, he ought to be worshipped by them. The Heathens had a deity they called Pan, whom they make to be a keeper of sheep F5; and some Christian writers have thought that Christ the chief Shepherd is meant; since, when the Heathen oracles ceased, after the coming and death of Christ, a voice is F6 said to be heard at a certain place, "the great Pan is dead: today, if ye will hear his voice"; the voice of the Shepherd, the voice of God, says Aben Ezra, his Word, as the Targum; the voice of the Messiah, both his perceptive voice, his commands and ordinances, which ought to be hearkened to and obeyed; and the voice of his Gospel, and the doctrines of it; which is to be heard not only externally, but internally: when it is heard as to be understood, to be approved of and believed, and to be distinguished; so as to have a spiritual and experimental knowledge of it; to feel the power and efficacy of it, and practically attend to it; it is an evidence of being the sheep of Christ; see ( John 10:4 John 10:5 John 10:27 ) , where the sheep are said to know the voice of the shepherd, and not that of a stranger; of which Polybius F7 gives a remarkable instance in the goats of the island of Cyrnon, who will flee from strangers, but, as soon as the keeper sounds his trumpet, they will run to him: though the words may be connected with what follows, as they are in ( Hebrews 3:7 Hebrews 3:8 ) , where they are said to be the words of the Holy Ghost, and are applied to times, and are interpreted of the voice of the Son of God in his house; for though it may refer to some certain day in David's time, as the seventh day sabbath, in which the voice of God might be heard, the word of God read and explained; and in Gospel times, as the Lord's day, in which Christ speaks by his ministers; and to the whole time of a man's life, which is called "while it is today", ( Hebrews 3:13 ) , yet it chiefly respects the whole day of the Gospel, the whole Gospel dispensation, ( 2 Corinthians 6:2 ) .