Now, in that tenth chapter of John, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, He that entereth
not in by the door into the sheepfold,
but climbeth 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 out.
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 will they not follow, but
will flee from him, for they know not
the voice of strangers.
This parable spake Jesus unto them, but they
understood not what things they were, which he
spake unto them.
Now, here we have it again, this lovely
picture of Christ and his followers, the shepherd
and the sheep.
And of all the figures used in the
Bible to designate our Lord and his people,
to me there is none so charming as
this of the shepherd and the sheep.
It is certainly the most popular and best
understood of all the figures.
It's understood even among people who have never
seen a sheep at all except in a
picture.
Those who have lived in places where sheep
could not grow and do not grow, nevertheless,
somehow managed to get a hold of this
beautiful figure and understand it.
Now, we deal here with the relation of
the shepherd to his sheep, and I point
out to you that it is a personal
relation.
And again I repeat that it is not
as it is with the Western sheepherders.
The Western sheepherder raises the sheep for profit.
It's a commercial proposition altogether.
He doesn't know his sheep.
He only knows how many sheep he has,
that's all.
He doesn't know them by name, and there
are many of them that will be born
and grow up to the age to be
sold or butchered, and he'll never see them
at all.
Or if he does see them, he'll stand
on some knoll.
You know what a knoll is?
Do you know what it is?
A knoll?
There are no knolls around here.
Everything's flat land, but out home we had
knolls.
A little bumpy hill, not much of a
hill, an apology for a hill.
He might stand on a knoll somewhere and
overlook his great flock of sheep and see
them as a white undulating surface yonder and
know they're his and know their number and
know their weight and know their size and
how much wool they'll produce and how much
meat he can get out of them.
But he doesn't really know them.
He doesn't claim to know them.
It's a commercial proposition.
He lives someplace else, and his sheep live
maybe in another state.
But ah, not so with David and the
Eastern Shepherd and the shepherds that our Lord
knew.
He hadn't so many sheep, but what he
could take care of them all personally.
And he knew them all by name.
He went to the trouble of naming all
of his sheep.
And they stayed by the shepherd.
And while they were by him, there was
confidence and acquaintance and affection.
Confidence and acquaintance and affection.
But no western sheepherder, his sheep have no
confidence in him.
They don't know he exists.
And if he came out and yelled at
them, they'd all run.
But the Eastern Shepherd has, he's brought his
sheep up, and he knows them from the
time they were born.
He helped to get them started in this
life and nursed them and held them on
his shoulder when they went astray and taught
them.
And so there's a warm personal relation there.
Now that is the beauty of Christianity.
The faith that brings us into personal relation
to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We said in the song that our brother
was teaching us here tonight, forget how it's
worded exactly, but something that I have found
a resting place not in device nor creed.
Now we all believe in creed, of course,
for creed's what we believe.
Otherwise we couldn't say I believe if we
didn't, the word creed, credo means I believe,
so we do believe in creed.
But our resting place is not in what
we believe, but who we believe.
And what we believe has meaning only because
of who we believe.
If we believed a thing, but didn't know
who said it, nor where it came from,
nor how it got its being, we'd have
a very cold and heartless and mechanical religion.
But the beauty of Christianity is that it
is not a code nor a creed, though
it has its code and its creed, but
that it is the religion of the person.
Our brother down here said he was saved
from a religion.
And I understand, can understand how a man
can react from the word religion and from
much that's called religion, I myself react violently
away from it all because religion without the
person is only a chain around the neck.
The man who turns from unbelief to religion
is exchanging a chain of iron and taking
a chain of gold, but it's a chain
nevertheless and it binds him as surely as
the chain of iron bound him.
But the man who has Jesus Christ lays
off all the chains and he has no
chain to bind him at all.
Here it's the person religion, the person of
Jesus Christ our Lord.
I wish that all of the preachers might
begin to preach the person, the person and
the presence, these two wonderful truths, the person
and the presence.
It says here that he leads his sheep.
Now, when he leads his sheep out, you
know, they must leave their comfortable fold and
go forth.
Isn't it a strange thing how we love
in the mornings particularly to stay in bed?
Back in the First World War, they had
a funny little song the men used to
sing.
I don't recall exactly all the words verbatim,
but it was, Oh, how I hate to
get up in the morning.
Oh, how I'd rather remain in bed.
And they'd sing that mournfully with a wry
smile.
They loved it.
And then one fellow said that the time
would come when he would murder the bugler
and spend the rest of his life in
bed.
That was a funny song they sang in
the First World War.
Well, we love that.
We love to bed down.
Now, it's funny, nobody likes to go to
bed.
Nobody likes to get up.
And once you have bedded down, you hate
to get out.
And sheep are like that.
They like to rest and stay in the
fold.
And it's not until the shepherd's voice rouses
them that they get up at all and
go.
But the Scripture says he leadeth them out.
It's almost humorous, and it's certainly pleasant to
contemplate, though certainly it's not a wise counsel
to follow.
You remember those disciples in the early days
of the Church when in the Book of
Acts they were all assembled in Jerusalem, all
of them.
And the Lord had said, Go ye into
all the world and preach the gospel to
every creature.
And he had said, Ye shall be my
witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and
unto the uttermost parts of the earth.
Now, that was God's formula for the evangelization
of the world.
But they stayed tight in Jerusalem right where
they had been born, right where the Pentecost
had come.
And they bedded down in the Jerusalem fold.
And then the Lord sent along persecution in
that 8th chapter of Acts.
And they were driven everywhere, and they went
everywhere.
And when they went, they went preaching the
word.
The Lord led them forth.
But he actually had to send persecution to
get them out of their warm, snug nest
and get them on their feet and get
them going where they should go.
So the Scripture here says the Lord leadeth
them out.
Now, he leads them out for a number
of reasons.
There is no food in the fold.
The food is in the green pastures.
And he has to get them up on
their feet and lead them out to the
green pastures that they may eat their fill
and then lie down beside the still waters.
Then they've got to have some exercise.
I believe that a church like this is
likely to be pretty well fed.
But I am not so sure about the
exercise.
We need exercise as well as food.
The sheep that lies down in the green
pastures and beside the still waters is likely
to get very fat and very useless unless
he takes some exercise.
So the Lord leads them out in order
they might get their exercise.
And then there is growth also and experience.
The sheep that would stay in the fold
would have no experience at all.
Now, Christians also must go forth.
They must go forth to work and to
travel and to get experience.
I said to Brother McPhee yesterday as we
were traveling along, I said, Do you suppose...
I was thinking about my trip to Virginia
and how I hated to go.
And I said, Do you think the time
will ever come when I'll not feel bad
when I have to go anywhere?
And he said, No, I don't think so.
The time will never come because I just
don't like to travel.
I'd have made a good tree.
Just plant me in the backyard and put
a little fence around me and I'd have
stayed right there.
But God won't let it happen.
He says, I'll lead forth my sheep.
And he didn't say we were to be
planted like trees in this instance.
He certainly called it, said we were to
be planted in the house of the Lord,
but that's another figure of another meaning.
But we are to go forth and we
are to travel about and do things and
get exposed to things.
I don't believe in an isolated and insulated
Christianity.
I do not believe in sanctification by insulation.
I told them down at Urbana and I
repeated tonight I don't believe that God will
make us holy by keeping us insulated.
And put the thick coating of moral and
social insulation around us so we never bump
elbows with anybody that doesn't believe exactly as
we do.
How do you know what you'll do until
you're put into a situation?
How do you know what you'll do out
yonder if you never go out yonder?
So the Lord leads us forth that we
may get tempted and that we may get
experienced.
And you wonder that I say that we
might be tempted?
Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost was
led by whom?
By the Spirit.
Where?
Into the wilderness.
For what?
To be tempted.
By whom?
The devil.
You didn't follow me but you should.
Being full of the Holy Ghost he was
led into the wilderness to be tempted of
the devil.
And the same Lord says that as he
is in the world so are we in
the world.
So he takes us out of that snug
place and takes us out into the world
not to mingle with its pleasures certainly and
not to do as it does.
We are to be there as a protest
and a conscience to the world.
Not to obey and follow the world but
to be there anyway.
And we Christians, I say, we have to
meet our enemies.
They're out there.
And then it says, Here he goeth before
them.
Now I want you to get that.
That he goeth before them.
And I want you to know that Christ
is always there first.
I don't know what your tomorrow may be.
If I did know your tomorrow and I
had it in my power to have you
reach past by me and write a hasty
prescription or a future for you or lay
out your little horoscope I wouldn't give it
to you.
Because it's better to be in the dark
and trust God from day to day than
to know all the details down the years.
That's why I don't ever recommend that any
Christian ever go to a fortune teller or
a necromancer or a seer or any of
the rest of these madams.
I wonder why it's always women.
I never heard of a man...
I wonder why it's always the women that
tell fortunes.
It used to be back in the days
of the Depression they had these phrenologists and
dark looking women.
I don't know what they were, Syrian or
whatever it might be.
But these dark women and they had the
human head all blocked off into sections.
And you went in there and you sat
down and for a dollar or whatever it
was she told you all about your character
and predicted your future.
I don't want to know my future.
One step's enough for me.
I ask not to see the distant scene.
One step's enough for me.
You may be coming into a critical period
in your life.
Some crisis may be out yonder only a
few days or weeks or months away.
And if you knew it was there you'd
have weeks or months to worry.
But if you don't know it's coming you'll
have your Lord and you'll get through it
all right.
So I don't want to know my tomorrows
and I don't want you to know your
tomorrows.
Only remember one thing.
Christ is always there first.
He does not sit back like a general
in a comfortable tent and tell his soldiers
to charge into the mouth of the cannon.
But wherever he sends them he's there before
them.
And he's not only there before them but
he's there with them.
Lo, I am with you always.
And you remember he never asks you to
go where he will not go and where
he is not going.
And he never asks you to do what
he has not done and is not doing.
And he never asks you to suffer what
he has not suffered and will not suffer.
We're in this together, he and we.
And we are not alone even though we
may think we are.
We're not alone.
We're in this together when we threw our
lot in with the shepherd and we were
his found sheep.
We went in with him so that it
is now with him.
There is that unity, that intimacy, that close
connection, that close tie, closer than the tie
of husband and wife, closer than the tie
of mother and child, closer than the tie
of patriotism or love of family is this
tie of the shepherd and his sheep.
Now our shepherd is present.
Oh, I don't know what we can do
to make people see this.
Our shepherd is present.
He's here in the place.
And this is the most significant thing about
this church, the most significant possible thing.
Not that I'm here or that either one
of these brethren are here.
That's not significant really.
What is significant is that we are all
sheep gathered around a shepherd and that that
shepherd is actually here in the midst.
Do you believe in what the Anglicans call
the real presence?
Of course they use it of the Eucharist.
They use it of the Lord's Supper.
They talk about the real presence.
But is anybody going to arrest me if
I borrow their phrase and they give an
application to it they didn't intend?
I believe in the real presence too.
But I believe that real presence is not
only in the bread and wine.
I believe that real presence is in the
fellowship, in the hearts of these people.
That is the most important thing here tonight,
that our Lord, our shepherd is here and
we are sheep of his pasture gathered around
the shepherd.
That, you know, is the explanation.
That's the philosophy back of my bigoted, narrow
views of things that I'm supposed to hold,
that the posers missed the boat and me
living in another generation, they say, and that
kind of thing.
But I have good logical grounds for my
position that when you're in the presence of
the shepherd you don't perform and show off
to the shepherd our little 18-month-old
grandson.
Why, his father has taught him the cutest
little trick you ever heard.
He can get a job in some youth
organization if he just gets a little older
because he's got the spirit of it.
He'll do some cute thing and then applaud
to beat the band.
Applaud himself.
Well, applauding ourselves, I don't think the Lord
wants us to perform for him and applaud
ourselves and applaud each other.
He wants us to lie quiet and like
Mary, listen to his voice and hear what
he has to say.
And if there's any applause, let it come
from somewhere else but certainly not from each
other.
And certainly we don't expect the Lord to
applaud us.
We're in the presence of the Lord.
Churches ought not to give performances at all.
I never like to hear anybody say our
choir will give a performance.
Uh-uh.
Trained monkeys give performances.
But Christians, they minister to the Lord.
There's the expression.
They minister to the Lord.
But in our day, we give performances.
And then they say, this artist will be
there in person.
And he will be there in person tonight
at the such-and-such Loggerhead Baptist Church.
Is that so, brother?
Do you expect him to be there in
spirit or there by proxy?
Of course he'll be there in person or
else he won't be there.
This artist will be there.
Why, he couldn't sweep off the stage in
grand opera.
He couldn't sing at the funeral of the
leading lady's pet poodle.
And yet he's called an artist.
They say our brother will be here in
person.
This artist will be here in person.
And he gets up and saws himself off
a solo with a steel saw.
And everybody says, wasn't it wonderful?
Brethren, that's not church to me at all.
That's not church to me.
Church to me is to get where the
shepherd is and all put our pride under
our feet and get all our heads empty
of what we know and forget our family
background and who we descended from.
I know who you descended from.
You can't fool me.
That old scoundrel that you descended from, I
know what he did.
He sinned and fell and tumbled into the
muck.
And you and I are here because we
descended from him.
But I don't like that.
I don't like to throw this spotlight on
men and on people.
The shepherd is here.
That's the most significant thing that I know
of.
Jesus Christ our Lord is in the midst.
Here in the 13th of Acts, here was
Paul and a lot of the others of
them.
It tells who they were.
They were the big fellows of the church.
Barnabas and Simeon and Lucius and Mammon and
Barnabas, I didn't name him, and Saul and
the rest of them.
But what do you suppose?
Had they come to hear these men perform?
No.
As they ministered to the Lord and fasted,
the Holy Ghost said, Separate me, Barnabas and
Saul, for the work whereunto I have called
them.
And when they had fasted and prayed and
laid their hands on them, they sent them
away.
And they, being sent forth by the Holy
Ghost, departed unto Seleucia and from thence to
Cyprus and so on.
Now that was it.
They met and ministered to the Lord.
They didn't gather to Paul.
They gathered to the Lord.
And the only true church is a church
that's gathered to a presence.
A group that is gathered to a man
is a religious group.
But a group that is gathered to the
presence is a church.
And so our shepherd is here.
How can he be here and yet be
at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty?
Ah, the mystery of the Godhead I cannot
understand.
The indivisible substance.
That you cannot divide the substance.
That he said, I will be with you.
And he said, I will, the Father will
send the Comforter unto you.
And so we have the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost in the midst.
And yet we have the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost at the right hand of the
Father.
We have the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
in Africa and in South America and all
wherever people are.
The indivisible substance, omnipresent and imminent.
Oh, the great doctrines of the attributes.
I still owe you six sermons on the
attributes.
Remember a few years ago I preached fourteen
sermons on the attributes of God.
And I told you that I had six
left to preach on, making twenty.
They say there are seven.
And I preached on fourteen and have six
more to go.
So I believe that God has more than
seven attributes.
I believe that the attributes of God are
innumerable.
And at least I can tell you of
twenty.
And one of these attributes is the omnipresence,
that he is everywhere.
Another is imminence, that he dwells in everything.
Now that's not Buddhism.
That is Christianity.
Buddhism says God is everything and everything is
God.
Christianity says no.
God is separated in his essence, infinitely removed
from everything, including the highest angel that exists.
But that in his condescension he deigns to
make the universe his robe and dwells in
it.
As the bride dwells in her wedding garment,
so the father dwells in his universe as
in a royal robe.
And that's his imminence.
I quote sometimes the old archbishop's marvelous formula
that God is above all things, beneath all
things, outside of all things, and inside of
all things.
He is above but not pushed up.
He is beneath but not pressed down.
He is outside of but not excluded.
He is inside but not confined.
He is above presiding.
He is beneath upholding.
He is outside embracing and he is inside
filling.
Our Father is everywhere and this is God.
That's Christianity, brothers and sisters.
Not belonging to the Christian and missionary alliance.
That's not Christianity.
You can belong to the Christian missionary alliance
and be a lost man.
You can be a Baptist and be a
lost man and they'd be the first ones
to say so.
You can be a Presbyterian and be lost.
But you can't be a Christian and be
lost.
You can't be a sheep of the fold
and not be known by your shepherd.
So the shepherd is here, omnipresent and imminent,
meaning that he's present everywhere and imminent meaning
that he's filling everything and dwelling in it.
Now David said, The Lord is my shepherd.
You can't get away from David because our
Lord Jesus Christ took David's 23rd Psalm and
carried it on and wove it into his
10th chapter of John here.
How much follows as a consequence that the
Lord is my shepherd.
And have you ever noticed the difference?
I wrote in one of the chapters in
the Divine Conquest about this and I don't
suppose very many people got it.
I didn't try to explain it.
I only used italics, which a writer, if
he aspires to be a good writer, never
uses except most rarely.
But I used italics there.
And I said, We say, The Lord is
my shepherd.
Instead of, The Lord is my shepherd.
I wonder if people understood what I meant
when I said that.
When we say, The Lord is my shepherd,
why we reduce the Lord to being our
servant, to lead us around.
David never said, The Lord is my shepherd.
In other words, Come on, shepherd, lead me
around here.
I am the big guy and you're my
servant.
But in wonder, he breathlessly exclaimed, Look, the
Lord is my shepherd.
And the emphasis was upon who was his
shepherd, not what the shepherd was, but then
who he was.
The Lord, he said.
Well, I'm the shepherd of this flock and
Reuben over here is the shepherd of another
flock and Levi over there the shepherd of
another flock.
But the Lord is my shepherd.
Those wonderful words.
And what a difference it is.
The Lord is my shepherd.
Instead of flippantly saying, The Lord is my
shepherd.
A Methodist preacher out in the East who
has a habit of delivering himself in some
pretty cryptic and marvelously wise remarks said recently
that in our time we have gotten to
using the Bible to gain our own ends
and having the Lord serve us instead of
our serving the Lord.
I think that came out in Time Magazine.
But wiser things have seldom been said than
those things.
We tend to want to make the Lord
our servant instead of being the servant of
the Lord.
And the marvel of it is that if
we'll humble ourselves to become a servant of
the Lord, the Lord in turn will take
a towel and gird himself and become our
servant.
Good old Peter.
Good old downright salty Frank Peter.
When the Lord girded himself with his towel
and took the basin and started to wash
Peter's feet, Peter got up aghast and said,
What?
You wash my feet?
Why I ought to be washing yours?
Who am I that you should wash my
feet?
I'm on Peter's side on that, aren't you?
He was a humble man and a reverent
man, and it was too much for him
to believe that what the great Lord should
wash my feet.
Jesus didn't argue.
He said, That's all right, Peter, except I
wash thee.
Thou hast no part with me.
Oh, how wisely!
He didn't say, Except I wash thy feet,
but except I wash thee, you have no
part with me.
Then Peter understood, and he humbled himself, and
he allowed his Lord to wash his feet,
knowing that he wasn't worthy of such a
high honor.
And here the Lord is my shepherd.
The Lord is my shepherd.
And he takes all the care and the
responsibility.
Did you ever look at somebody that you
had reason to believe?
No, I was going to read that, but
I dropped it three times, and I'm not
going to read it now.
I'm not superstitious, but anything that doesn't want
to get read that bad, you can have
it.
What was I saying?
Did you ever look at a person that
was comfortably dumb and wish that you were
like them?
I have.
I have met people, nobody here now, of
course, but I have met people just so
comfortably dumb.
They're just so happy and restful and relaxed.
And here I am so tense I could
bite ten fanny nails any time in the
morning.
And these restful, comfortable fellows are just so
friendly and easygoing, and their laugh is so
restful.
And they don't know anything, and they aren't
much.
And they're just comfortably dumb.
And I have recently said to myself, and
I've never prayed that I'd be like that,
but I at least have been guilty of
a fleeting wish that I could be as
restful and as dumb as some of my
good friends.
Well, I also have been guilty of wishing
that I was really a sheep.
It must be wonderful to not have a
care in all the wide world.
Not a care.
Mr. Chase, years ago, Stanley was a little
fellow, just a wee little tyke, six or
seven months old.
He used to come out the house and
usually drive me home.
And then he'd, we'd get, he'd go in
where Stanley was, and he'd pick him, pick
up his hand and drop it, and pick
up his foot and drop it.
And call attention to how completely relaxed he
was.
He said he's not going to bone his
body.
Just pick him up and he'd just drop,
perfectly relaxed.
You try to pick me up, I'll be
clear out on the floor, wide awake.
But little old Stanley was just as relaxed
as he could be.
And you say, isn't that wonderful to be
relaxed like that?
Well, a sheep could, if he only had
sense enough, could be as relaxed as possible.
Just relaxed because there isn't a care, he
doesn't have a care in the world.
A shepherd charges himself with every care.
If it is food, he's responsible to find
it.
If it's water, he's responsible to find it.
If it's oil for a bruised head, he's
responsible to use that oil.
If it's the foal, he's supposed to know
where the foal is.
If it's an enemy, he's supposed to know
what to do with that enemy.
And the sheep only knew it.
He doesn't need to have a care in
all the world.
Oh, I had preached this, that I could
learn it and you could learn it with
me.
That we could stop this everlasting living two
years in advance.
Living two months in advance.
Living way down the years.
We sometimes discuss this habit of mine of
living so long ahead of time.
I argue, Brother McAfee, that sometimes I lie
in bed and get things all figured out
and then I won't have anything to do
the next day when I do them.
And I guess I have a little Scripture
for it.
The Scripture says, Commune with your own heart
upon your bed and be still.
But I don't think that Scripture means lie
there and worry.
I don't think it means that.
Because if we're the sheep of the Lord's
pasture, we haven't got a single worry in
the whole wide world.
The shepherd takes the responsibility.
And it says here, and this is the
sheep's own testimony, He restoreth my soul, of
course, without which all else is useless.
And he leadeth me in paths of righteousness.
Three little words.
Four little syllables.
He leadeth me.
He and me with leadeth in the middle.
The little ring that binds two souls together
is the little word leadeth.
He and me.
He leadeth me.
Why, in my shelves I have the complete
works of Plato translated by Jowat, the finest
in the English language.
You can't get anything as good anywhere else.
And yet Plato never said anything in all
of those eight volumes.
He never said as much as David said
in three words.
He leadeth me.
And on another shelf I have most of
the major works of Aristotle.
And yet Aristotle, for all of his wisdom,
never said in all of his works as
much as David the shepherd said.
He leadeth me.
Ah, my friends, they call Christians dumb.
And they say, I've just been reading a
book recently on the cults and sects in
America.
And they call the Christian missionary alliance a
sect.
But they admit in that book that it's
one of the broadest of the sects and
one of the most charitable with a broader
outlook toward all other Christians.
That's very nice of them.
But we know what we are anyhow.
And the sectarian spirit, no, no, my brethren,
we daren't have it.
We know what we believe, and we know
that instead of being stupid, we're wise.
Because we have found him, and he's found
us, and we're joined together by leadeth.
He leadeth me.
David said that.
He leadeth me, and he leads me in
the paths of righteousness.
And this he will do for his own
name's sake.
You see, every shepherd was proud of his
sheep, and he had a reputation.
It's funny how we get reputation for things.
We once knew a woman in another city
who was proud of the fact that her
brother was the best-known junk man in
the whole town.
And there are plenty of women who are
proud of their cherry pies, and there are
men who are proud of their low golf
score, and others who are proud of other
things.
We all have pride in our handiwork.
Something we can do.
Cut down oak, not oak, but ash, trees,
and hickory, and would make axe handles out
of them.
When the snow came and the streams were
ice-locked and heavy snow lay on the
ground and there was nothing to do, they'd
make axe handles and hoe handles.
Didn't turn them out with a lathe as
they do now, but made them by hand.
And we're proud of them.
Oh, how proud they were.
Every man is proud that he can do
something better than somebody else.
And the farmers out that way were proud
of their horses.
They were proud of their match teams.
A farmer who really was proud of his
farm, he wouldn't have two horses hitched up
together, one of them with a white nose
to the right and the other with a
white nose to the right.
One of them with one, say, left rear
foot white and the other one with the
left rear foot, no, no, no.
They had to be perfectly matched.
If the white sweep came down and turned
off to the left on one horse, it
had to come down and turn off to
the right on the other one.
And if the left, left rear foot was
white on the left lead horse, then the
off horse, the one on the right, had
to have a left right foot white.
And you smile at that.
Did I say it?
No, I said rear right.
My man, Friday, keeps me straightened out here.
But it's hard to explain so I get
tangled up.
You know what I mean.
They had to be matched.
They were proud of that, very proud.
Shepherds proud of the fact that his is
the best flock that roams anywhere over the
hillsides.
And the finer the sheep, the more honor
to the shepherd.
The shepherd had a stake in his sheep.
And they, by being fat and relaxed and
comfortable and well fed and obedient, reflected honor
to the shepherd.
And so Jesus Christ takes pride in his
people.
And if he has an obedient, good living,
happy people, it reflects honor to his holy
name.
And it's for his own namesake that he
leads them out in paths of righteousness.
So remember that he not only leads his
flock for their sake, he leads his flock
for his own namesake.
And that's what the Scripture means when over
and over it talks about his namesake.
He does it for his own honor.
He wants everybody to know what a fine
shepherd he is and how glorious he is.
And so he keeps his flock and he
keeps his sheep.
Every mother knows that she will be judged
by the kind of children she turns out
on to the sidewalk of a morning.
You see coming down the sidewalk or riding
on the bus, a poor little pale-faced
thin little girl with her hair obviously not
combed that morning or maybe not for several
mornings before, her dress dirty, her stockings torn.
You don't blame the little girl.
You pity the little girl.
But you say to yourself, wonder about that
mother.
That mother only knew it.
Her innocent little lamb is telling an awful
lot about her, telling maybe that she drinks
and lies around and smokes and watches television
and reads love stories and lets her little
girl go out dirty.
You say it's poverty, Mr. Tozer.
You shouldn't speak against poverty.
I grew up in poverty.
And no man has any tenderer regard for
the poor than I.
Poverty is one thing.
Dirt is another.
And the poorest mother with a ten-cent
comb can comb her little lamb's hair back
and tie it with a cheap ribbon.
And people are saying she's a lovely little
girl, not very well-dressed, but she's been
taken care of.
And I see other kids get on the
bus.
One little round-faced doll about that high.
I don't think she was too young to
go to school, but obviously she did.
I think she went to a Dutch school
over here, a day school, because she got
off.
That was the only thing I could figure.
She could be going to that Dutch school.
And she got on.
She was lord of the little manor.
She was in charge.
She had her little suitcase along.
She had some peanut butter sandwiches in there.
Her mother let her out carefully, put her
on the bus, waved goodbye, and the little
girl went to school.
Oh, she was taken care of.
Now, she might not have been rich.
Probably was.
Where she got on, rich people don't live.
And she did it for her own namesake.
She said, I don't want my pretty little
girl to go with stringy hair and unmatched
socks and dirty, unpressed clothes.
At least she took care of her.
I never saw the woman before, and I
suppose I'll never see her again, but I
have a good regard for that woman.
I say to myself, for her namesake, she
took care of her little lamb.
So he leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness and looketh after me for his own
namesake.
For his own namesake.
So for that reason, I will fear no
evil enemies, snakes, bears, lions, robbers, even the
shadow of death itself.
And why?
Because thou art with me.
You know, the shepherd could have said, word
to the sheep and said, hold the port
for I am coming.
And the sheep would all have fled in
terror into the wilderness and been eaten by
the lions.
But he didn't say, I'll be there after
a while.
He said, I am there now.
Thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me.
Goodness and mercy, these flow out of the
shepherd's heart, of course.
And he says, I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever.
Now, I just want to say a word
about that forever, and I'm finished.
You know, he's the only person that could
put that word forever on there.
We can laugh Emerson in one of his
ragged poems, for he never wrote a very
finished one, but he certainly wrote some profound
ones.
And one of his beautiful but unfinished poems,
he tells about the farmer and the landowner,
and he quotes from the deed, you know,
and the articles of possession that are filed
in the courts.
He quotes how it says to so-and
-so and his heirs, forever.
And I said, forever?
No, no, no.
When a couple gets up to get married,
we don't say, in want or in wealth,
in sickness or in health, from this time
forth and forever.
No, no.
We say until death shall separate you.
You don't put forever in their wedding vows,
marriage vows.
Forever isn't in the hand of a man.
And if you know what forever means, you
don't put forever in a deed, and you
don't write forever into your contracts.
And when you get a job, you don't
sign a contract forever.
The boy who's in Florida and signed his
contract to play for the Cubs or the
Soxes didn't sign forever.
When you go into the Army or Navy,
it may seem forever, but it isn't forever.
There's no forever in Uncle Sam's contracts.
Jesus Christ alone can put forever in.
I will dwell in the house of the
Lord forever.
He puts forever in there.
The only person who can do it, Moses
couldn't do it.
Moses went up on Mount Moriah and Mount
Pisgah and died.
David couldn't do it.
David served a generation and slept with his
fathers.
Oh, how they loved to sleep with their
fathers in those days.
God bless the dear old patriarchs, it says,
and he gave up the ghost and slept
with his fathers.
How we laugh at the quaintness and simplicity
of it, and we reduce it now to
a few lines in the paper that nobody
reads.
But in those days, God knew where his
sheep were when they died.
They were sleeping with their fathers.
In the cave of Machpelah, maybe, or in
the new tomb of Joseph.
He knew where every sacred blob of clay
rested.
And he knows to this hour and this
day, though the winds of heaven have dried
up the clay that was once a temple
of the Holy Ghost and have blown it
to the four points of the compass, in
the day when the shepherd gathers all of
his flock into the presence of the Father,
he'll have every one of them, because he
puts forever in their hearts.
That's why I can't join lodges and link
myself up with temporary organizations and get all
heated up about something that hasn't got forever
in it.
God put forever in their hearts, the scripture
says, eternity in their hearts.
And if God puts eternity in my heart,
then I demand something that's got eternity in
it.
Scripture says that God made Adam and then
he looked around him all the beasts of
the field and couldn't find a helping meat
for him worthy of him.
So he put him into deep sleep and
took out a rib and made a woman
equal to him that she might be worthy
of him, because not a beast was worthy
of him.
They named them every one and he named
them according to their nature, but not a
bit of their nature corresponded with his nature.
And he looked at the highest of them
all, the anthropoids, and shook his head and
said, No, nothing inside of me responds.
This is not my kind.
And God said, All right, I'll get you
one that's your kind.
So he got him Eve.
And Eve was worthy of him because she
was his kind.
And what he had in him, God put
in her the same nature.
And they knew each other and responded and
became the father and mother of the race.
So God has put eternity in the heart
of every man.
And we look out on all the world.
Radio parades its programs.
Television parades its programs.
Magazines pour out their stories.
Politics pours out its talk.
Business and arts and professions and all the
rest, all of them begging for our attention.
Something in my heart says what Adam said
about the beasts.
No, they're all right and we'll use them.
Nice to have them around and they're useful.
But nothing in me leaps up and says,
That's my kind.
That's it.
Because you've got eternity in your heart and
the radio has time only.
Business, time.
School, time.
Your heart says, Eternity, eternity.
Something inside of me longs for eternity.
Forever is in me.
Three months is a long time for a
radio program.
A man holds a job 40 years, well,
he gets his name in the paper.
Forty years is a long time for a
man to hold a job and yet that
same man has forever in his heart.
And he looks at his job and says,
Well, I'll work and I'll be honest and
I'll make my living but this isn't it.
Another man looks at fame, he writes, he
paints, he's a musician, he has ability and
he's known.
But that isn't it because that's got time.
A man said to Napoleon one time, Napoleon
said to his secretary, he said, You ought
to be a very proud man.
He said, Why, sir?
He said, You ought to be proud.
You're my secretary.
You'll go down famous in history as my
secretary.
And the secretary said, Tell me, sir, who
was Alexander's secretary?
Napoleon had no word to say.
No, no.
Fame won't do it.
Can storied urn or animated bust back to
its mansion called the fleeting breath.
Neither all the honor of all the wide
world can rouse the sleeping dust.
There's something in me that demands it forever
and until I get forever, I'm a hungry
vagabond and wander on the face of the
earth, looking under every rock and searching behind
every star, climbing every tree and plunging into
every pool and looking, always looking, looking for
that forever.
Nobody else has it.
But God raised his son from the dead
and set him at his own right hand
and gave him to be the author and
fountain of immortality.
So I shall dwell in the house of
the Lord forever.
Where's that paper?
Changed my mind.
Listen to this, my brother.
For I can read my titles clear to
mansions in the sky.
I bid farewell to every fear and wipe
my weeping eye.
There shall I rest my weary soul and
hide my weary soul in seas of heavenly
rest and not a wave of trouble roll
across my peaceful breath.
Old John Newton.
God bless the old Calvinist.
He knew what he was talking about.
So now I wonder, have you got a
shepherd?
Is he yours?
Has he put forever in your toil and
forever in your thoughts?
Has he put forever in your hopes?