Now, we're entering tonight the tenth chapter of
the book of John, the shepherd chapter, and
I promise you that if you will keep
coming over the next few Sunday nights, that
if you are a Christian, that is, if
you are interested in the things of God,
you'll not be disappointed.
And tonight I want to sort of begin
with the first little section, for that chapter
is divided into sections, and I want to
read the first six verses.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Jesus now
is speaking, of course, he that entereth not
by the door into the sheepfold, but cometh
up some other way, the same is a
thief and a robber.
But he that entereth in by the door
is the shepherd of the sheep.
To him the porter openeth, and the sheep
hear his voice, and he calleth his own
sheep by name, and leadeth them up.
And when he putteth forth his own sheep,
he goeth before them, and the sheep follow
him, for they know his voice.
And the stranger they will not follow, but
will flee from him, for they know not
the voice of strangers.
That's the first five verses, I said six,
but it's five because the sixth verse begins
a new section, and it said, This parable
spake Jesus unto them, but they understood not.
Then in verse 7, 6 is a changeover,
a modulation into verse 7, Then said Jesus
unto them, but the then, we don't know,
that could have been a week later, two
weeks later, a month later, or it could
have been immediately.
The point is, the first five verses are
a union.
Now, this is the great shepherd chapter.
It is a developing and an extending of
the shepherd's song.
I thought when hearing Mrs. Anderson sing that
lovely little green pastures that she sang this
morning, I wonder how many, if the facts
were all in and the truth were known,
I wonder how many thousands of hymns have
been written on the 23rd Psalm, based on
that song.
You're new, and almost every time somebody gets
up to sing, you're a new song on
the 23rd Psalm.
And this chapter is a development of the
23rd Psalm.
There are seven points of attention here in
these first five verses, seven of them.
There's the sheepfold and the door by which
the shepherd enters the fold.
There's a false shepherd, a true shepherd, the
porter, the sheep, and the stranger.
They're there.
I didn't put them there to read them
in.
They're here.
In these first five verses, there's first of
all the sheepfold.
And I ought to say, I think, that
while this has a very intensely spiritual meaning,
a lofty and elevated meaning, it is at
the same time a very homely and simple
illustration drawn from the shepherd and his sheep,
and clings and follows very closely to the
simple truth about sheep and shepherds.
The Lord simply took it and, without any
change, elevated it to the heavenlies.
Now, first of all, here's the sheepfold.
What is this sheepfold?
It is a place of rest and safety
for the sheep.
And here it is the spiritual kingdom of
God.
I believe in the kingdom of God, don't
you?
I believe in the kingdom of God.
I don't believe in a dual kingdom or
a dispensationalized kingdom, or a kingdom that is
the kingdom of God one time and the
kingdom of heaven another, and there's two different
things, all of that confusion.
I just believe in the kingdom of God,
the kingdom of our Father, the kingdom of
heaven, which is the same as the kingdom
of God, the safe resting place for those
who inhabit the kingdom, the palace, the mansion
of the king where his family gathers.
And this is the kingdom of God.
It's called here the sheepfold, and how lovely
and gentle and tender this illustration is.
The sheep are here, and the shepherd is
there, and the walls are strong around, and
there's only one door, and the shepherd is
at the door, and nobody can get in
to bother the sheep.
They can lie down and sleep because they
are safe in the fold.
Now, this spiritual kingdom is prepared by the
almighty God himself for his people, and comes
to us through grace and redeeming blood.
That's how we get it.
The world is outside that kingdom, but this
blessed kingdom of God was given to us
by God himself, and it was through his
grace and mercy and his eternal plan of
redemption, wrought by his son on the cross
of Calvary at the resurrection, that this kingdom,
this sheepfold, was made safe.
I'd like to have testified tonight, and I'd
just like to have told the people that
I find myself in the sheepfold.
I am a sheep.
We in this country, we didn't raise sheep.
Don't raise sheep the way they do over
there.
They raise them with dogs here, and they
send a dog out after their sheep.
They wouldn't send any dogs out after sheep.
The dog was driven away with a club,
and the shepherd took personal care of these
sheep.
But over here, you know, they raise them
by machinery and herd them with dogs.
But even though we didn't know how to
raise sheep out where I came from, I
love this sheep, the little old, long-legged,
woolly-tailed lambs staggering around in February and
March when they were born.
I love to see the sheep.
And there isn't anything quite so tender on
the farm as the love of a poor,
dumb old sheep for her land.
Now, the dumbest animal on the farm, without
any doubt, is a sheep.
A pig has got a college education compared
with a sheep.
Their heads slope back.
There isn't much room for brains.
Consequently, there aren't many.
But God made sheep to depend upon shepherds.
They didn't need many brains.
They just needed to know their shepherd well,
and the shepherd would provide the brains and
the care and the green pastures and all
the rest.
Well, that's the fold now.
Then there's the door by which the shepherd
enters the fold.
And before the sheep can come in, the
shepherd must take oversight of that fold, and
he must know where the door is, and
the shepherd, the real shepherd, comes to the
door with authority and assurance.
He knows what he's doing because he is
the shepherd.
Now, this door here is not Jesus Christ,
our Lord.
Later on, it becomes Jesus, our Lord, because
the shepherd stands in the door and becomes
the door.
But the opening into the fold is not
Jesus Christ.
The opening into the fold is the door
which Jesus himself enters.
In other words, when Jesus Christ came to
the world, he had to come through the
door of the kingdom in order that he
might become shepherd and king of the kingdom
and Lord of that fold.
And he had to come through the door.
Now, what was the door?
The door, in these first five verses, is
God's appointed way and carefully indicated in the
Old Testament order and predicted in detail in
Old Testament prophecy.
John the Baptist came preaching, and he made
a great many converts.
Here they were, great many converts.
Nobody had died for them yet, they simply
had been converted to repentance and remission of
sin, and there they were.
And now someone was to come who shoelaces
it.
John was not worthy to stoop down and
unloose.
And somebody was to come and prove himself
to be the true shepherd.
And to get there, he had to come
through the door.
And it was the door of Old Testament
prediction, the door of prophecy, the door of
detailed, outlined prophecy and prediction of the Old
Testament.
He had to come through the Old Testament
ritualistic, mosaic way so that when he appeared,
he could enter the door and take over
and everybody would know that he was the
true shepherd.
Now, I want you to notice what that
door meant to our Lord Jesus Christ.
Before he could enter and take over with
authority and assurance and call the sheep to
him and become Lord of the sheepfold, he
had to prove himself.
So he had to come, first he had
to be of the seed of Abraham.
And being of the seed of Abraham, he
had to come of the Lion of Jacob.
And being of the Lion of Jacob, he
had to come also of the Lion of
David.
And being of the Lion of David, he
had to be born in the country of
Palestine.
Being born in the country of Palestine, he
had to be born in the village of
Bethlehem.
Being born in the village of Bethlehem, he
had to be born of of a virgin
mother.
Being born of a virgin mother, he had
to be born at a specific time in
history.
Buddha was born three hundred years too soon.
Mohammed was born several hundred years too late.
This shepherd, if he was to follow and
come in at the Old Testament door of
prediction, he had to be born at a
specific time in history laid down in the
book of Daniel.
Then there had to be fulfillment of detailed
predictions.
He had to be called out of Egypt.
Oh, there were so many things that he
had to do.
The sheep had to be scattered, that is,
the lambs had to be scattered for a
time while the shepherd was slain.
Then the shepherd had to rise again from
the dead.
Not only all of this, but he had
to prove all of this.
Now there were false shepherds, Jesus said.
Notice.
He said here that a stranger they will
not follow.
And the stranger, that is, anybody else except
the true shepherd, he comes in, he's a
thief and a robber because he doesn't come
in at the door.
He doesn't prove himself to be the real
shepherd.
Understand, whatever you've been taught, remember this, that
the person who comes in as a thief
and a robber, he's not a church member
who gets into membership without the new birth,
as we preachers like to say.
He's not talking here about church members getting
into the church, he's talking about the shepherd
getting into the fold and proving himself the
true shepherd who had a right to be
in the fold.
And the false shepherds, the thieves and the
robbers, they were the ones who tried to
prove they were the true shepherds, they were
the messiahs, and they had a right to
call the sheep to them.
They had a right to enter the fold
and take over with authority.
And Jesus said that they were the false
shepherds.
They were the strangers and nobody would want
to listen to them, and they came not
to help anybody, but to destroy.
Now, I want you to notice that there
never was one of these false shepherds that
could qualify.
A rather amusing and yet very pertinent little
illustration of this is the time that one
of these false shepherds, who was born too
late, came to the United States, or England,
I don't remember, which it seems to me
it was the United States, and he declared
himself to be the messiah, that is, the
true shepherd.
And of course, the world grabbed on to
him, and a church was opened to him.
And he pulled up in a big rig
of some sort, as we'd say on the
farm, a rig, whether it was back in
the buggy days, I don't remember, but he
pulled up and they had laid a canopy
out from the church door to the sidewalk
so his royal majesty wouldn't get his little
tootsies dirty on the sidewalk.
And just about the time this magnificent carriage
drove up, and the now defunct messiah got
out to march up in stately dignity and
royal pomp to the church, declaring himself to
be the messiah, the Salvation Army Band went
down the middle of the street.
And what do you suppose they were playing
and singing at the top of their voices
with the accompaniment of the big bass drum?
They were singing, I shall know him, I
shall know him by the prints of the
nails in his hand.
And this fellow had everything but the prints
of the nails in his hand.
He couldn't show the marks of the nails.
He couldn't show where they'd driven the spikes
in his feet.
He was a false shepherd, and he wasn't
there to help anybody.
He was there to line his pockets with
what is elegantly known as moolah, which has
more power in the Church of Christ today
than most preachers have, money.
Well, you see, no shepherd but one, nobody
but one could prove himself, only one, and
he was our Lord Jesus himself.
Now, he was the true shepherd.
And I would point out to you that
when Jesus came, he came of the seed
of Abraham, and he came of the line
of Jacob.
Now, he could come of the seed of
Abraham and not come of the line of
Jacob over where our nurse friend down is.
There are people there of the seed of
Abraham, but they are not of the line
of Jacob in Arabia.
They are of the seed of Abraham, but
they did not come from the loins of
Jacob.
Therefore, no Arab could possibly be the Messiah.
And on the other hand, they could have
come of the seed of Jacob and still
not have been in any wise in the
Messianic line.
And then they could have been born of
the line of David and not have been
born in Palestine.
There are a lot of people that have
come down from the line of Abraham that
were not born in Palestine.
Now, I tell you, you can just find
them down here all around over the streets
of Chicago and all over the world in
the village of Bethlehem.
But our Lord Jesus Christ met every test,
every detailed test.
And then last of all, they took him
out and they pierced his side.
And he cried, Eloi, Eloi, lemme sit back
tonight.
And he proved himself to be on every
detail, he proved himself to be the Messiah,
the true shepherd, the one who had a
right to come in at the door with
authority and take over and call the sheep
and protect them and be their true shepherd.
Now, who's the porter?
Well, there was a man who said, Behold,
the sheepfold of God is about to appear.
Behold, I come to bring you tidings.
Repent and be forgiven of your sins, for
the kingdom of God is coming in.
And there is one coming to open that
kingdom and be its Lord and open that
fold and be its shepherd.
And I don't know who he is yet,
but when he comes, I'll be happy if
I can only unloose his shoes, for I
am not worthy even to do that.
And then when at last the dove came
and descended upon Jesus Christ, John the Baptist
pointed and said, Behold, the Lamb of God,
this is he of whom I speak unto
you, saying, There cometh one after me mightier
than I, whose shoes I am not worthy
to unlatch.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit
and fire.
And thus the shepherd opened the door by
saying, Behold, the Lamb of God.
Or the shepherd said, the porter, I mean,
said, This is the shepherd.
Now, John the Baptist was the last of
the Old Testament prophets, and he came with
all of the Old Testament line converging upon
him.
And when Jesus Christ appeared, he stepped aside,
the porter stepped aside, and turned the sheepfold
over to the shepherd.
And Jesus Christ, our Lord, came in and
finally died for his sheep.
Now, brethren, that's always the trouble with the
false shepherd.
He wants to live, but he never wants
to die.
He wants the fleece of the sheep, but
he's not willing to die for the sheep.
But the true shepherd laid down his life
for the sheep.
The true shepherd came not to destroy the
sheep, but to destroy the devil and sin.
And the false shepherd comes to destroy and
kill and rob and fleece the people.
When a man came who was to be
the true shepherd, he had to die for
the sheep.
Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, was ready to
and did die for that sheep.
Now, the sheep themselves, who are they?
Well, the sheep aren't the goats.
There's a difference between sheep and goats.
You know, we get our figures of speech
all mixed up.
Someday when we all get to heaven and
we get a new equipment inside our heads,
then we'll understand everything.
But in the meantime, we'll fall over one
another's feet, I suppose.
But there is a feeling abroad that all
you have to do to a goat is
get him converted and he'll become a sheep.
Now, God never performs any miracles like that,
brethren.
The Lord never made a sheep out of
a goat yet, and there isn't any place
in the Bible that indicates that God ever
made a sheep out of a goat.
A goat is a goat, and he'll be
a goat until he dies, and he'll die
a goat.
But a sheep is a sheep.
A sheep may be a lost sheep or
he may be a saved sheep, but he's
a sheep nevertheless.
Who are the sheep?
I don't know exactly who they are, but
all over the city of Chicago, there are
some sheep.
I don't know which ones they are, and
if they were paraded before me, and if
I were to stand at State and Madison
and be asked to pick out the sheep,
I wouldn't be able to pick out the
lost sheep.
I might be able to pick out the
saved sheep they'd be carrying in the Bible,
or have the smile of Jesus Saved button
or something.
I might pick out the saved sheep, but
I couldn't pick out the lost sheep.
But God knows where the lost sheep are.
And the lost sheep are the sheep that
are still lost.
Though they're sheep, they're lost sheep.
And the Bible never says anything about the
shepherd going out to find the goat.
It says he went out to find the
sheep.
The sheep that was lost.
But you know these lost sheep had something
that no goat ever had.
They had these lost sheep.
They were ready to hear and to come.
They knew a voice.
They knew the voice.
They were troubled.
Old Jacob was a lost sheep.
His brother Esau was a goat.
And Esau never, never had any sense of
divinity, never any sense of divinity on his
life at all.
He lived in the red plague.
He ate the same red pot.
And he was a decent enough fellow, but
he never had anything, any tug, any pull,
any lift at his soul.
There was never any longing for God, any
desire to be different.
He heard no voice.
But crooked old Jacob heard a voice.
And he was bothered, he was troubled by
the voice that he heard.
And he went out into sin, troubled by
that voice.
But at last you know the story of
how he came home.
He came home in two sections.
He came home and then he wandered a
while and then he finally made it clear
through and got his right name and got
rid of the old Jacob name and got
Israel.
He'd been a sheep all the time, but
he'd been a lost sheep.
And then the Lord had found him.
And you will find, brother and sister, that
everybody that ever gets converted is a person
who, if they will look at their own
hearts, will discover that somewhere back down the
line they felt the pull and tug of
God.
I came from a home that people don't
like to have me call them pagan, but
they, it was pagan.
I called myself a pagan in an editorial.
The managing editor circled it and said, do
you want to call yourself a pagan?
I sure I want to call myself a
pagan.
We were a pagan home.
We had no religion around there at all.
Nobody prayed.
Nobody knew God.
Nobody went to church.
There was an old red New Testament my
Uncle Clem had had.
He'd died years before.
And that was all religion we had around
the place.
There wasn't even a hymn book around the
place.
We were pagans, just pagans.
I remember when I was a young fellow,
I don't know how old, maybe as old
as my friend Harry down here.
I went to bed one night, and I
don't know whether I was scared or just
exactly what it was, but nobody talked to
me about God.
But I felt a strange, wonderful something.
And I began to talk to that wonderful
something.
And finally there was a warmth of delight
that came down over my heart as I
lay there in my pagan bed there on
that farmhouse in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.
And I was so happy and delighted that
I said to myself, I'm Jesus' little boy.
Nobody had ever told me to say that.
Nobody had ever fed that into my mind.
I'd never heard the expression.
But I went to sleep that night saying,
I'm Jesus' little boy.
Well, of course that wore off because nobody
knew anything about it.
I had no Bible.
I couldn't have quoted a verse of scripture
if they had been asked.
But something had happened.
And maybe ten years later, when I was
about seventeen, maybe eight years later, I was
converted and knew it and knew when and
knew how.
You tell me that God wasn't getting a
poor old lamb, a poor pagan lamb ready
back there all by himself in a dark
bedroom in a farmhouse?
He was.
I was a lost sheep, but I was
hearing a voice.
And I didn't know what it meant and
there was nobody to tell me, but I
was hearing it.
I believe in that.
And here are the sheep.
I don't know where the sheep are, but
I know there are some people that never
hear a voice.
They live in this world as cold and
hard and carnal, and they may be decent,
they may be moral, they may be generous,
they may be faithful to their wife and
family and good pillars of society, but they
can never say, I'm troubled, I heard something,
I felt a tug, a pull, a longing,
something that dissatisfied me.
They're always satisfied with their car and their
boat and their stocks and bonds and their
houses and their family and their lawn and
they're nice people.
You feel like a dog in saying anything
about them.
But they're just made of this world.
They belong down here.
The lines between them and God are broken
completely.
There is no impulse.
They hear nothing.
There are drunken bums down here tonight that
have been since three o'clock this afternoon
guzzling one mug of liquor after another.
On their way home they'll cry, curse themselves,
and wish they'd gone to church instead.
They're bothered, they're bothered, they're hearing something.
They're lost sheep and they don't belong out
there in the goat pen.
They're the sheep.
Then here's the stranger.
Now, these strangers that Jesus talked about, this
stranger Jesus talked about, he said, his sheep,
wherever they are, wherever they are, he that
entereth not by the door into the sheepfold
but clambereth up some other way, the same
as a thief and a robber.
He that entereth in by the shepherd of
the sheep, and to him the porter opens,
and the sheep hear his voice, and he
calls his own sheep by name, and leadeth
them out.
And when he put forth his own sheep,
he goeth before them into the green pastures,
and the sheep follow him, for they know
his voice.
But a stranger they will not follow, but
will flee from him, for they know not
the voice of strangers.
Their strangers are those who come claiming to
be, to have a right to the sheep's
love, but they're false.
They're there as thieves and robbers.
They are there only for themselves, that's all.
And these real sheep, they won't hear any
such voice as that.
But you know what I have read?
I have read, and I think it's accurate,
that a sick sheep will follow a stranger.
A healthy sheep knows the voice of his
master, and he won't hear any other voice
but the voice of his master.
But if he gets sick and things go
wrong with him, then he'll listen to another
voice.
And when a sheep wanders off after a
stranger, it's because he's a sick sheep.
A whole sermon ought to be preached on
that, that in the day in which we
live, we're hearing all kinds of voices, and
the poor, sick sheep are running after shepherds
that have no qualification whatsoever.
They have no nail marks in their hands.
They have no oil on their head.
They have no sacrifice in their heart.
They're not out to give, they're out to
get.
They're not out to protect the sheep, they're
out to fleece the sheep.
They're not out to die for the lambs,
they're out to slay the lambs for their
own aggrandizement.
But it's remarkable how many of these poor,
sick sheep will follow after such shepherds.
We have them all around, little flocks of
sick sheep, anemic and weary, so weary they
can't bleat anymore.
And they have been run to death and
skinned and fleeced to death by the stranger
who can't qualify to be the shepherd.
He can't.
He wasn't born of the right seed, he
wasn't born of the right line, he wasn't
born in the right place, he wasn't born
at the right time, he wasn't born as
a virgin mother, he didn't die on a
cross, he didn't rise from the dead.
He has no marks on his hands.
But the sheep are out following them.
You don't have to go to the false
cults to find people running after false shepherds.
I'll follow Jesus Christ over a precipice and
into the rocks and up the mountain way
and across the boiling rivers, but I'm as
stubborn as a bull when it comes to
following a man who doesn't have the marks
of the Messiah on him.
He doesn't have to expect me to run
along after him and hand him my money.
And you'll find lots of sick sheep he
can skin without skinning me.
Well, the shepherd is calling.
And some of you aren't saved, you're lost
sheep, you're lost sheep.
But the reason I know you're sheep is
that you're hearing something.
Maybe not in the sermon tonight, I don't
know about that, but you've been hearing something.
You're not satisfied, you're definitely not satisfied.
If you were, you'd be home looking at
television tonight instead of being here.
You'd be gofying with whoever happens, the current
jackass who happens to be on, the court
clown who happens to be getting the big
pay this year.
You'd be gofying and you wouldn't be at
the house of God.
And the fact that you're here may indicate
that you're hearing a voice, there's a pull,
a tug, a lung.
The old goose of which I illustrate sometimes
who was shot and crippled and came down
and they tripped her wings and kept her
in the barnyard.
And she stayed all summer long in the
barnyard.
And she got among the chickens and the
ducks.
But she was a wild Canadian goose nevertheless.
And when the fall came on, she felt
something within her.
She wanted to go south.
Way back, coming down through those little round
eggs that through the mystery of life passed
on from the first goose God ever made,
clear down to our little old hen goose
walking in the barnyard.
She'd flap those wings of hers and get
no leverage, no traction.
She couldn't get airborne, but it was in
her.
The old farmer said rather sadly, but with
a touch of humor, he said, you know
what she'd done?
He said she stood by the gate until
she finally got up.
And he said she pointed her long goosey
nose beak to the south and started to
walk.
They had trimmed her wings and she couldn't
fly.
But the instinct to migrate was so strong
within her that she figured if she couldn't
fly, she could walk.
It would probably have taken her two years
to make the trip, but thank God at
least she was true to the instinct that
lay within her.
And there are some of you listening to
me tonight.
You've heard that story before, but I tell
it to you because I want to arouse
within you if there's that thing inside of
you that you've heard a voice and you've
heard the voice of Jesus say, come unto
me and rest.
You've heard the voice of Jesus say, I
am this dark road light.
Then in Jesus' name, yield to that voice.
Listen to it.
Don't turn away.
Have as much sense as a goose at
least and be true to the thing that
lies in you.
You say, how'd I get it?
Ah, don't ask me mysterious questions.
I can't give you an answer.
I don't know.
How did a 10-year-old or an
8-year-old boy that had never heard
the gospel and had never been to a
church service but once or twice in his
life, how did he lie there and pray
and he talked to God?
I don't know.
There are mysteries too deep for me.
But if there's a longing in your heart
for Jesus Christ and God and immortality and
eternal life, and you're not satisfied with the
newest shiny car, you're not satisfied with the
tallest, biggest radio, you're not satisfied with all
that money you're pulling in, you're not satisfied.
In solemn, quiet moments you say to yourself,
why was I born?
Was this what I was born for?
To live and grow up and eat so
many times a day?
Work and then die?
Wasn't I born for something else?
Ah, you're hearing the honking, so to speak.
You're hearing the honking of the migrating flock.
You're hearing the bleating of the sheep on
their way to the fold.
Won't you listen tonight and hear the voice?
The shepherd is calling.
If you can't hear him, I don't know
what anybody can do for you.
But if you can hear him, maybe through
a song, maybe through something I said, maybe
through something I didn't say, maybe through something
you heard today on the radio, maybe through
none of those things, but just a general
dissatisfaction and an aspiration, a longing after God.
If you've got it, you have a right
to believe that you are of the lost
sheep, and the shepherd who proved himself to
be the true shepherd, who with authority has
taken over the kingdom, he's the Lord of
the sheepfold.
And he tells them who goes in, come
and apply to him.
Say, Lord Jesus, I come to thee just
as I am, just as I am.
He'll receive you and he'll take you in.
He'll make you a found sheep.