Our commencement speaker hardly needs an introduction.
He is the pastor of the famous Moody
Memorial Church, the author of many books, the
writer of periodical articles such as his column
in the Moody Monthly, and a well-known
speaker.
He's been in Dallas many times before.
He served as special lecturer in our Bible
lecture series at the seminary and has spoken
on other occasions.
He is a man who is a thorough
student of church history and of the literature
of the church and has a rich background
and amazing knowledge of the many books that
relate to the Christian movement today as well
as in yesteryears.
I'm always amazed at the breadth of his
learning, his constant research in various areas of
church history, but most of all in his
facility in expressing great truths simply and pointedly
and often with his own humor that is
so refreshing.
We're delighted to have him here.
He's a very busy man and we appreciate
him taking the time to make a special
trip from Chicago in order to share this
occasion with us.
It's my privilege now to introduce Dr. Warren
Wiersbe.
Thank you, Dr. Walvoord.
To the best of my knowledge, I have
never been on candid camera.
I used to enjoy watching the program several
years ago.
It gave me a bit of a refreshment
after the busy services of the day.
And one evening while I was watching, I
began to commiserate with a young man who
was before the camera.
Here's what they had done.
They had gone to a prep school out
east, a very famous elite school, and they
had given to each of these students a
vocational guidance examination.
Of course, most of the students in this
school anticipated being college presidents, bank presidents, famous
lawyers.
Then they called the young men in one
by one to give them the results of
the vocational guidance test.
And I can never forget, Alan Funt was
sitting behind the desk acting like the vocational
guidance instructor.
This very fine-looking young man came in
and sat down.
He was just trembling with excitement because he
wanted to know what the result of the
examination would be.
And he was quite confident that he would
be told, you're supposed to be a great
lawyer or a research chemist.
There was some bright future for him.
And Alan Funt looked at the young man
and said, now we've gone over your examination
very carefully.
And we have discovered that the best vocation
for you is that of a shepherd.
Now, I wish I had a photograph of
the look on that boy's face.
And it was not a sheepish expression either.
He was completely stultified.
And he began to laugh and said, surely
you're choking a shepherd.
Well, I commiserated with him because at that
point I reminded myself that I was a
shepherd.
And that down through history, God has solved
many problems by laying hold of a shepherd.
When he wanted to bring salvation into this
world, he got a hold of a fellow
named Abraham.
When he wanted to build a nation out
of Abraham's loins, he got a hold of
Jacob, and Jacob built a nation.
When he wanted to save that nation, he
got a hold of another shepherd, Joseph.
When that nation was in terrible, terrible condition
and had to be united and strengthened, God
got a hold of another shepherd, a young
man named David.
And when God sent his own son to
this world, his own son was not embarrassed
to say, I am the good shepherd.
May I read to you what God did
with David?
I'm reading from Psalm 78.
The first 65 verses are terribly discouraging.
They tell everything that God did for Israel
and everything Israel did to God.
God saved them, they put themselves into bondage.
God led them, they deliberately went in the
wrong direction.
God gave them manna from heaven and they
requested to go back to Egypt for the
leeks and the onions and the garlic.
There's a menu for you.
That's one crowd you wouldn't ask to sing
Breathe on Me.
God would protect them from their enemies and
they would deliberately go back into bondage.
And so when you read these first 60
or 65 verses, you say, if I were
God, I would start all over again.
But God's answer to problems is to lay
hold of a woman, lay hold of a
man, lay hold of a young person.
Sometimes he even laid hold of a little
girl.
He laid hold of a little boy.
He laid hold of a little baby.
He chose David also, his servant, and took
him from the sheepfolds, from following the ewes
great with young.
He brought him to feed Jacob, his people,
and Israel, his inheritance.
Now listen to this.
So he fed them according to the integrity
of his heart and guided them by the
skillfulness of his hands.
He said to David, David, I want you
to become a shepherd.
And David didn't get a startled look on
his face.
David said, well, Lord, I've always been a
shepherd.
If you want to promote me from the
flock to the nation, here I am.
I'll do what you've called me to do.
Now I say to the graduating class and
I say to myself and to these esteemed
faculty and administration people behind me, I say
this to each of us that God is
looking today for people to solve problems.
He's looking today for men and women who
will make a difference.
Anybody can go into a ministry and wreck
it.
Anybody can walk into a problem and make
it a bigger problem.
There are some people gifted this way.
But I think the Lord has called us
to be a part of the answer and
not a part of the problem.
And I want to suggest to you from
these verses in Psalm 78 that if you
and I will realize three basic needs and
then do something about meeting these needs, we're
going to have the time of our lives
making a difference.
You can make a difference in that school
or that church or that mission field, that
home, that neighborhood.
Now what are these needs?
Well, first there's the need of God's people.
What do God's people need?
What do churches need today?
Well, found in two words, feeding and leading.
So he fed them according to the integrity
of his heart and guided them by the
skillfulness of his hands.
The people that we minister to have these
basic needs.
They need feeding and they need leading.
Now God's people today desperately need feeding.
I suppose it's a mark of getting older
and there's nothing much I can do about
that.
I prefer to call it maturity.
I had my annual autopsy a couple of
weeks ago and the doctor said to me,
he said, you have the blood pressure of
a 15-year-old boy.
So I proudly announced this at home and
God always has someone to deflate you a
little bit.
And my son said, well, that's great, but
you've got the scalp of a 90-year
-old man.
The problem in our churches today is that
we have this thing that Amos talked about,
a famine of the word of God.
Our Lord Jesus said, take heed what you
hear.
And I fear, and perhaps once again, I'm
speaking as one who gets older and maybe
critical.
I trust not.
I trust this is an evaluation from some
perspective and some experience.
Our churches today and our Christian people today
desperately need feeding.
They're living on substitutes.
Entertainment has been substituted for exposition.
Activity has been substituted for ministry.
Competition has been substituted for cooperation.
Human glory has been substituted for glorifying God.
And we've lost this thing called worship.
And you can go from church to church
and from body to body and meet starved
people and they don't know what's wrong.
And God said to David, now David, the
reason these people act the way they act
is because they haven't been fed.
The need of God's people is for feeding.
This is why one of the characteristics and
one of the essentials for ministry is apt
to teach.
And of course, apt to teach means apt
to learn.
This is why Paul said to those Ephesian
elders, I want you to shepherd, to feed
the church of God, which he has purchased
with his own blood.
God's people need feeding.
And God's people need leading, not driving.
The shepherd does not get behind the flock
and whip them.
He goes before the flock and sets the
example.
That's why Paul was able to say, you
examine my ministry during these three years.
You'll find out that I set the right
example.
God's people need feeding and God's people need
leading.
They don't need exploiting.
A mature person uses his authority to build
up people.
An immature person uses people to build up
his authority.
And I would warn these graduates as I
would warn myself in the ministry, God did
not call us to be slave drivers.
God called us to be shepherds.
God called us to lead and to feed.
That's what God's people need today.
And I can assure you, brothers and sisters,
that when you feed God's people and lead
God's people, it starts to solve problems.
They start to love each other and reproduce.
When you don't feed the sheep, they start
nipping at each other.
When you don't lead the sheep, they start
wandering off.
And so God has called us to meet
these needs.
Now, a second need is found in this
passage.
The need of God's people is for feeding
and leading.
God has a need.
That may sound strange, but it's true.
God has a need.
God needs a person to be the shepherd,
but not just any person.
Whether we like it or not, we have
here in verse 70 the grace of God,
the sovereign grace of God.
He chose David.
He chose David to be a shepherd.
Now, what is there that God's looking for?
He's looking at the heart and he's looking
at the hands.
Listen to it.
So he fed them according to the integrity
of his heart, and he guided them by
the skillfulness of his hands.
David was a man after God's own heart.
He was a man with a believing heart.
He trusted God.
He was a man with a servant's heart.
David didn't get his start by being a
king.
He got his start by carrying care packages
to his brothers in the army.
He got his start by being a shepherd
in the wilderness.
And when he killed that lion and killed
the bear, it wasn't written up in any
magazine.
He didn't show up on the 10 o
'clock news.
Nobody knew about it except God.
God prepared him in private.
God prepared him in solitude.
And then when David was ready, he brought
him out in public, let him kill a
giant.
And then little by little, David was increased.
David's a beautiful illustration of that principle in
Matthew chapter 25.
Well done thou good and faithful servant.
Thou has been faithful over a few things.
I'll make thee ruler over many things.
Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.
He wants a man with a servant's heart.
Now if we go into a ministry to
be the boss, there are going to be
problems.
You can't feed people without a shepherd's heart.
You can't lead people without a shepherd's heart.
He had a shepherd's heart.
He had a servant's heart.
David knew that we serve in order to
lead.
David knew that we give in order that
we might get.
David knew that we go down that we
might go up.
Some folks have never learned that.
God was concerned about his heart, but God
was also concerned about his hands.
Ladies and gentlemen, no amount of sincerity in
the heart can compensate for lack of skill
in the hands.
David knew how to follow the youths who
were with young.
And shepherds tell us that it's very important
to take care of those mothers.
And after the lambing season, to care for
the little ones.
David did this.
David had skill to his hands.
He had skill with a sword.
He had skill with a sling.
And this is what you have been doing
for several years.
You've been getting skill for your hands, and
you've been getting spiritual nurture for your hearts.
And God is looking for that kind of
a person.
It's unfortunate that in some quarters there are
those who say, well, as long as your
heart is right with God, it's not important
to develop ministerial skills.
I'm glad my doctor doesn't have that philosophy.
Every time I have had surgery, I've been
grateful.
In fact, I went to make an appointment
with my doctor some months ago, and the
nurse said he won't be here.
I said, I'm sorry, is he ill?
No, he's leaving town.
Vacation?
No, he's going to a two-week seminar
to update himself on his skills.
I hear men say, well, I've had 10
years experience in the ministry, and I say,
I'm sorry, you've had one year's experience 10
times.
You see, if those who take care of
the body can develop skills in the hands,
why can't we develop skills?
It's good for us to stay with our
work.
It's good for us to read books on
the things that we've studied.
God's looking for a shepherd.
He's looking at the shepherd's heart.
He's looking at the shepherd's hands, a spiritual
heart, skillful hands, which leads us now to
the third need.
God's people have a need.
They need leading and feeding.
God has a need.
He needs men and women who have got
the right kind of hearts and the right
kind of trained hands.
Now, what does that man need?
What does that woman need?
There stands the shepherd, the shepherdess.
What does that person need?
It's found in one word in verse 72,
integrity.
So he fed them according to the integrity
of his heart.
Now, integrity means oneness.
When I was in grade school, they taught
us that you have fractions and you have
integers.
Integers are whole numbers.
People with integrity are whole people.
It's the thing Jesus talked about.
No man can serve two masters.
If your eye is single, your whole body
is full of light.
Love not the world, neither the things that
are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love
of the Father is not in him.
David prays, Unite my heart to fear thy
name.
Integrity means oneness of life.
I'm sure the Lord must weep when he
looks down upon those who minister without integrity
because you know who the losers are.
Not only God's people, they aren't being fed
properly, they aren't being led properly, but that
minister becomes a loser.
The integrity of our character.
In just a few minutes, you will be
handed a degree.
Nobody can hand you character.
I've heard people say, well, a crisis is
what makes a man.
Don't you kid yourself.
A crisis doesn't make a man.
A crisis shows what a man's made of.
A man is made, a woman is made
every day, inch by inch, pound by pound
in the everyday decisions of life.
And more than one person has found his
life dividing.
A double-minded man, unstable in all of
his ways, a double-hearted person, loving here
and loving there.
David was the kind of a man who
had integrity of person.
It took me a long time to discover,
but I'm glad I finally learned it, that
ministry is not something that we do.
Ministry is something that we are.
And if our ministry is to have wholeness
and character, we have to have integrity.
Now that's easier said than done, students.
Oh, how easy it is to preach but
not practice.
How easy it is to pray but not
be an answer to our prayers.
There's a word for that in the Bible.
It's called hypocrisy.
The voice is the voice of Jacob and
the hands are the hands of Esau.
And God is looking for that one great
thing in our lives, integrity, so that we
do practice what we preach and we do
practice what we pray.
And our message is not an echo of
somebody else.
Alexander White has long been one of my
favorites.
I remember standing in the pulpit of Free
St. George's in Edinburgh and thinking to myself,
the great Alexander White stood here and preached
those surgical sermons that just cut right into
your soul.
He had an assistant.
I won't name him.
He himself became a very well known preacher.
But when he first began as White's assistant,
he began to imitate Alexander White.
And when he prepared his messages, he prepared
them the way White would prepare them.
And one night after the service, Alexander White
turned to his assistant and made one statement.
And that statement has been helpful to me
in my ministry.
He said to his assistant, preach your own
message.
You see, we have a lot of cookie
cutter preachers today, a lot of imitators, a
lot of echoes.
And I say to you, teach your own
lesson, preach your own message.
God is filtering his truth through you.
And if you have integrity, your character and
that message will blend together and you'll see
things happen and it'll make a difference.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest example
as a He fed people.
They hung upon his words.
He led people.
Our Lord Jesus Christ knew the needs of
people, and he was a shepherd.
And his life was like that seamless robe
that they gambled for all one piece.
And I would say to you, and I
would say to my own heart as I
return to my own ministry, integrity, the seamless
robe of Christian character built up through hours
of study and meditation and prayer and obedience.
And then you step out to meet the
needs that are out there.
And the sheep look up and they say,
here is a person who leads us.
Here is a person who feeds us.
And God looks down and says, there is
a person whose hands and whose heart I
can use.
And the Holy Spirit from within says, yes,
here is a person of integrity.
So he fed them according to the integrity
of his heart.
And he led them, guided them by the
skillfulness of his hands.
And when you do that, you make a
difference.
Gracious Father, you see our hearts tonight.
I pray that you will help each one
of us to be a part of the
answer and not a part of the problem.
To make the kind of divine difference that
brings glory to God, strength to your people,
the gospel to the lost, the accomplishing of
your will in this world for Jesus' sake.
Amen.