In the 10th chapter of John, verses 10
to 16, the thief cometh not but to
steal and to kill and to destroy.
I am come that they might have life
and that they might have it more abundantly.
I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd giveth his life for the
sheep.
But he that is an hireling and not
the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not,
he seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the
sheep and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them
and scattereth the sheep.
The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling,
and careth not for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd, and I know
my sheep, and am known of mine.
As the Father knoweth me, even so know
I the Father, and I lay down my
life for the sheep.
And other sheep I have which are not
this fold, them also I must bring, and
they shall hear my voice, and there shall
be one fold and one shepherd.
Now, this is, you might be surprised to
hear me say, a difficult chapter to preach
from.
The reason is not what one might suppose.
It is not to find truth here, but
to make a selection of truth at any
given time.
Because of the excessive plenitude of truth in
this chapter, every verse, every phrase, almost every
major word is a text.
We feel that we are walking in molten
gold, that we are in a diamond mine,
with diamonds jutting out everywhere, to be picked
up basketfuls of diamonds.
So tonight, I have almost arbitrarily arranged it
like this, to talk about the thief, and
the hireling, and the wolf, and the other
sheep, and the imperative of finding them, and
the time when there shall be only one
fold and one shepherd.
Now, verse 10 is not a pleasant verse,
not at all a pleasant verse.
The thief, he says, cometh not but to
steal and to kill and to destroy.
So there we have a picture of the
thief.
He sneaks into the fold, and his purpose
in coming in is to steal sheep, and
to kill some sheep, because he wants to
eat, and wantonly to destroy the flock.
That is, the destroying is not apart from
the stealing and killing.
The stealing and the killing is the destroying
of the flock.
Now, this thief is an enemy to the
sheep, and he is also an enemy to
the true shepherd whose sheep they are.
Now that's a solemn, if beautiful, or beautiful
if solemn truth.
If we simply leave it there, unconnected with
any modern situation.
But we don't dare do that, because this
truth is for us today as well as
for them back there.
And the simple truth is here that we
have pictured the religious racketeer, the person who
comes in under the guise of religion, and
who is not there to help the sheep
but to fleece the sheep, and to steal
from the sheep, and of course to kill,
only that he might eat the sheep.
It's not wanton killing, it is killing for
the sake of the food.
So this thief is in there to get
what he can for himself from the sheep.
He is the slick confidence man of the
kingdom.
He can smile, pray, quote a text, and
be a villain still.
Now, they don't hesitate, these religious racketeers, which
our Lord tells us about.
Now this is not I introducing it.
I'm finding it here.
They don't hesitate to use sacred things.
I have some respect for the highwayman who
goes out at the risk of his own
skin and holds up a man on the
highway and takes his money.
I certainly have some respect for him.
He's putting his own life in jeopardy, because
it has been known that the highwayman with
his gun was not fast enough, and the
other man shoots first.
So many a highwayman has lost his life.
It's dangerous.
Robbery is dangerous.
And for a man to go out and
rob like the traditional robber and take the
risk of having his own brains beaten up,
at least you can say, well, he's a
bold man.
But this thief is not a bold man,
because he does not put himself in any
jeopardy at all.
He uses religion as his disguise.
And under the cloak of religion, he becomes
a racketeer.
And seeing that he's a cynical, bad man,
deeply depraved, he doesn't hesitate to use any
sacred thing.
For instance, healing of the body.
He will take healing of the body and
make a racket out of it.
And they have done it and are doing
it.
There are healing men who hire people to
come and pretend they're sick, and they pray
for them and they get up and praise
the Lord.
That's well known.
I've got that documented.
That's a fact.
That's known, that they hire people.
I have hired people and otherwise persuaded them
to lie down and pretend they're sick.
A man who was healed after eight priests
had given him up, eight priests had given
him up, he was instantaneously healed with the
touch of Jesus Christ.
So necessarily, he believes in divine healing.
He went to a healing campaign where one
of these men was operating.
A little boy, six years old, was prayed
for.
He was blind.
He couldn't see, of course, being blind.
And when they were through praying, the evangelist
says, Now can you see?
And he said, Yes.
And he followed the evangelist around over the
platform to prove that he was healed and
could see.
And my friend, who had been healed after
eight priests, had given him an extreme unction
and given him up as dead.
And he was converted and became an Alliant
preacher now.
But he went up to the little boy
and he said, Sonny, were you blind?
He said, No, sir.
He said, Were you ever blind?
He said, No, sir.
He said, I'm in school.
He went to the mother and said, Is
that your child?
She said, Yes, that's my child.
He said, Mother, was that boy ever blind?
She said, No, sir.
He was never blind.
It was a racket they were running, and
of course the crowd went into hysterics and
praised the Lord and wept and clapped their
hands and went on big.
But this thief was in there to get
the money of the people and to steal
a reputation at their expense and to live
off the most sacred emotions of the human
breast and to fatten himself on the woes
of mankind.
That man is a thief, and whoever operates
like that is a thief.
And he is thoroughly bad.
He's depraved more deeply than a highwayman.
And the man who holds up this store
and robs it is a gentleman because he's
putting his life in danger.
A policeman may see him come out and
put a bullet through him, but nobody's there
to put a bullet through this racketeer who
is paying people to say they're blind when
they're not.
He's a thoroughly depraved liar and child of
sin, and yet he can smile and pray
and quote a text and pretend to be
deeply in love with the poor, sick world.
Then missions are also used as a racket.
I think that the healing of the human
body, salvation of the human soul, and the
work of divine missions, foreign missions, those are
so sacred we ought to speak of them
only in hushed voice.
And yet there are those who can, with
open eyes, cynical souls of the kingdom, they
can enter and use foreign missions as a
means of getting popularity and making money and
lots of it.
And there are those who have learned that
if you touch the tender cord of foreign
missions, that God's good, innocent, generous people will
shell out of their money largely.
And so they have it arranged so that
they can get to the money of the
people and can have a good cut out
of it and can live well and drive
big cars at the expense of God's simple
-hearted, honest people who gladly and joyfully give
of their money because they think they're giving
it to a good cause.
And one fellow is claiming that he's broadcasting
behind the Iron Curtain.
Somebody told me in Virginia he said it's
a well-known and provable fact that all
he has is a half-hour radio program
once a week.
But over in this country the big ads
indicate that he's doing a tremendous job over
there.
Now, it is the business of the shepherd
to warn against that kind of thing and
to warn God's people against it.
And some people don't like to hear it
and they'll be mad, and some won't come
back here and they'll say, that man poses
a scoundrel because he dares to talk about
healing and missions and things like that in
such a bold and terrible way.
Well, I read in the book of Ezekiel
where God says they feed themselves and don't
feed the flock, and they rob and they
kill and they get fat on the flock,
and God says, I'll fix them.
And I'll send true shepherds out that will
round up my flock and bless them.
And we also have men who live off
our love for our dead.
The love we have for our very dead
is used sometimes by these false shepherds, these
thieves.
And money is taken and popularity is received.
Now, that's the thief.
And if you think for a minute that
Christian charity would pull a veil down over
that thing, you don't know what Christian charity
is.
When a man is honest and fair and
bold and tries to tell the truth, there's
always some tender-minded and simple-minded saint
that's ready to run up to him and
say, now, wait a minute, let charity cover
a multitude of sins.
If any of these thieves would repent, I'd
be one of the first ones to shake
their hand and say, all right, bud, I'll
pray for you now, start straight and try
to give that money back and live like
a man from now on.
And I'd be one of the first ones
to help him.
But love cannot cover a thief when a
thief is battening and getting himself a wad
of money in the holy precincts of the
sanctuary.
And then, verses 12 and 13, we come
to another fellow, not as bad as the
thief.
He's the hireling.
There's almost a streak of humor here, and
there's a kind of a sardonic humor underneath
this one.
He says in 12 and 13 that the
hireling, who is not a shepherd, whose only
sheep are not, he sees the wolf coming.
And, of course, he ducks out.
He leaveth the sheep and fleeth.
And the wolf catches them and scatters the
sheep.
And the hireling flees just because he is
a hireling, and he doesn't care for the
sheep.
Now, who is the hireling?
Well, he certainly is not as depraved as
the thief because he doesn't come into the
sanctuary and pretend to be anything.
He doesn't deceive.
He's not a racketeer.
He's just a hired man.
One of the commentaries says that this word
here, the only word we have in English
for a hireling properly, is the tramp laborer.
The fellow who loafs around, floats around, gets
a job, works for a few months, and
gets himself a little wild, and then goes
his way, spends it, and then when he
needs another little bit of money, gets another
job.
And so here's your hireling.
Now, he doesn't deliberately destroy, and he isn't
a thief, and he does do an honest
day's job, but he's not a shepherd.
He only works for the shepherd.
He's a hired man.
He doesn't owe him anything.
He just works there.
And he has no love for the great
shepherd.
He has no interest in the sheep.
And he does what he does for a
living.
Now, there's your Christian leader, who is simply
doing what he does because he knows that
it pays him, and it's a rather easy
living.
Now, I like that word living I've used
there because, did you know that in ecclesiastical
history, you can find it, you don't have
to go way back, you can find in
recent ecclesiastical history, that the word living is
used of a pastor.
A young fellow comes out of the seminary
and gets his degree, and his bishop says
to him, well, now, young man, I think
I can find a living for you.
So he gets in the church, and he
calls that his living.
Can you imagine that?
Now, I, for my part, I can't imagine
it.
I realize that the ox that treads out
the corn has to be fed, or you
won't have any ox very long.
I realize that he's worthy of being fed.
I realize the old priests of Israel used
to live off of the tithes of the
other eleven tribes.
I realize that our Lord himself was fed
by the generosity of the people to whom
he ministered, and Paul said that was all
right.
And I realize that, that's part of the
order of God, that those who give full
time to the Christian work should be supported
by those who cannot give full time to
it, but are perfectly willing to share in
the support of those who do give full
time.
The missionary that goes to the field can't
also labor and have a job.
He has to be free, so we turn
him loose and pay him.
That's perfectly all right.
But there's a different approach to it, you
see, my brethren.
Take such a man, say, as R.S.
Roseberry, who has spent his lifetime in Africa
and has put the whole continent in debt
to him.
He's had to live on what the people
sent him, of course.
He couldn't have a job in an office
or a factory.
He's had to live off the generosity of
the people.
But the idea that mission work was a
living for him would be so shocking to
him, I think he'd drop dead if anybody
even suggested it.
And so any other man who is an
honest man, who is an under-shepherd, and
who loves the shepherd, his embarrassment will be
that he has to take anything.
He won't accept his work, his spiritual work,
as a living, as a way to get
along.
He will accept it as a joy, a
privilege, and then rather embarrassingly say, well, I
suppose I'll have to take a salary.
I can't work in a factory and do
my work for the Lord.
But whatever you say, I'm not laying any
law down and asking for anything.
I don't want any raise.
I just want whatever you want me to
have.
It's all right.
It's the only way the man who loves
the sheep and loves the shepherd can ever
serve God.
But as soon as he makes a living
out of it, he's a scoundrel.
And just as soon as he becomes a
hired man, a cramped laborer, oh, what sardonic
humor there is there.
These cramped laborers.
And you know, we've got a lot of
these fellows traveling around putting on one-night
stands.
They start in California and go to Maine,
or else better, they start in Minnesota and
go to Florida.
And I notice that they don't start in
Minnesota in May.
They start in November.
And they're called to the Lord down where
it's warm.
And we've got so many of them.
We had a church in Southern California that
was without a pastor.
And the home secretary said he got 14
applications from brethren who felt instantly called to
the Lord to go to California, where the
mockingbird singeth all the day long and the
skies are always bluest.
And it's very lovely and nice.
And people want to have fun, and so
they start.
And they're right ahead, and I get the
letters.
I'd like to be at your place Wednesday
night for thus and thus, because I'm on
my way to this and that.
And they're having, why don't they bum their
way instead of bumming their way on the
churches?
Better bum than bum, I would say, wouldn't
you?
And yet these hard tramps who come in
and put on one-night stands, and the
sheep get down on their knees and let
them hear them.
Don't shear them all over.
They just take off a little chunk.
But by the time they've reached Florida, they
have quite a bag of wool.
And they can live down there until the
mockingbird nests and the sun hath returned to
the north.
Well, the harling and the thief, God help
us preachers.
We walk between the nether and the upper
millstone, to mix up a figure, and we
can become rascals without anybody finding it out.
Pray for us, brethren.
Pray that we'll be holy and clean and
sacrificial and good and right and humble, because
there are more temptations for a minister.
It's easy to fool the public.
I can stand up here and fool you
people, and you will think I'm a saint,
and I can be a devil underneath.
And you are saying this in good heart,
and you won't find it out for five
years.
Pray for the ministers of the gospel.
Pray for the leaders.
Pray for the missionary promoters.
Pray for those who promote the work of
God, that they won't degenerate into thieves and
harlings and use the church of God as
a way to make money.
Well, then there's the wolf.
And I think I ought to say, I
want you to hear me say, that there
are a wonderful bunch of good, godly, honest
fellows.
I meet them wherever I go.
Good, honest men that would die for Christ
at the drop of a hat, that would
serve him.
One man, a nephew of mine by marriage,
told me about Hyman Appelman.
Why, he said, you know, Uncle, Hyman Appelman,
he's a song leader, he said, that Dr.
Appelman prays long hours and prays and lies
and prays and calls on God long hours.
He closes on Sunday one place and opens
on Monday another place and never takes a
vacation and continues to drive on.
And I said, tell Dr. Appelman he'll kill
himself.
He'd better quit it.
And the fellow said, he's been doing it
for 25 years.
I said, my objection is overruled.
A man can do it 25 years, can
suffer like that and pray like that and
labor like that.
He's got my respect.
There are a lot of good men, and
I'm even prepared to say that the majority
are.
But God warns against the thief and the
hirely.
Look out for the hired tramp who's only
working for the shepherd and who hasn't any
interest in the flock nor any interest in
the shepherd.
Then there's the wolf, verse 12.
Satan is that wolf, of course, and the
thief and the hireling are enemies of the
sheep and they're friends of the wolf.
Because after the thief or the hireling has
gotten in and scattered the sheep, the wolf
finds it very easy to go in and
get himself a nice meal of mutton.
As long as the sheep are gathered around
their shepherd, sure of themselves, poised and careful,
they're safe.
But as soon as they go wild and
start to bleat and run all directions, all
the wolf has to do is just wait
till one passes him and pounce and he's
got it.
So there's the wolf.
And now this hired man sees a wolf.
And again, I find a certain amount of
dark complexion humor here.
He says that the hireling sees the wolf
coming.
And he says to himself, now I'm working
here, but I don't see why I should
take any risk with the fangs of a
wolf.
So he just disappears.
He hears the sheep bleating and he looks
back over his scared shoulder and sees them
down and being torn, sees the blood flow.
But he doesn't care.
He's just working for the shepherd.
They're not his sheep and he isn't attached
to them and they don't know his voice
and he doesn't know their name.
He never patted their heads.
He never held them in his arms when
they were lambs and he never mended their
legs when they were broken.
He just works for a while for the
shepherd.
So he doesn't care what happens to the
sheep.
He just doesn't want to get torn by
the fangs of the wolf.
So the last picture we have of the
hireling is that he's got his hat in
his hand to make good time.
He's getting out of that region immediately.
He may not even come back for his
pay.
Though the chances are knowing him, he'll likely
be around Monday morning for his pay.
And then Trampone someplace else.
Now isn't that a ghastly, terrible description?
I didn't make that description.
Jesus did.
He put it here.
And ecclesiastical history is replete with that kind
of thing.
Why?
Because it's a fallen world and we're bad
people and we need God.
It's what might be expected in a bad
world like this.
Ah, the contrast.
The next point.
I'm the good shepherd.
He'd come all the way down and been
incarnated that he might be a good shepherd.
And he didn't care for himself at all.
You notice that he never performed a miracle
for himself, never one.
His miracles were always for somebody else.
He never asked anybody for anything for himself
except that woman when he said, Will you
give me a glass of water?
And I'm not sure that he didn't ask
for water in order to get her into
conversation or that he might win her to
himself, which he did.
He never asked for anything.
A selfless man, a man who doesn't ask
for anything but who lives for the sheep
and finally he dies for the sheep.
He cares for the sheep, this good shepherd.
He was there when they were born and
he picked up the little old scrambled lamb,
all tail and legs and appetite, and started
it off right and taught it its first
little how to get its meal.
And if it got in trouble, he found
it and he taught it his voice and
he carried it when it got lost on
his shoulder.
He loved the sheep and he was the
good shepherd.
What a contrast.
Thieves and harlings and wolves and then standing
over against it is the great good shepherd
of the sheep.
How we ought to love the Lord Jesus.
How precious he ought to be to us.
This shepherd that proved that he loved us
even unto death.
And what can you do more for anybody
than to die for them?
You can help them all well and good,
but maybe not at your own inconvenience.
You can give them a good deal, but
maybe not at your own loss.
You can sacrifice something for them, but you
will still have something left.
But when you give your life for them,
you don't have anything left.
So when Jesus our Lord gave his life
for his flock, he didn't have anything left.
There was the good shepherd.
How we ought to sing about that shepherd.
This is my favorite picture of Jesus, that
of the shepherd.
He has many, many names and he appears
under many, many figures and metaphors, but that
of a shepherd is the sweetest of them
all.
This good shepherd who found the lambs.
And there isn't a Christian here tonight, but
the good shepherd didn't find you.
Lost and undone, he found you, he found
you.
Here's the good shepherd.
Now, I notice again another point, the other
sheep, verse 16.
Other sheep I have which are not of
this fold.
Now, he has other sheep beside Israel he
met.
Israel, even Peter, found this very hard.
They had gotten the idea that they were
the favored of the Lord.
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and
their Bible and their language and their temple
and their city and their priests and their
ritual.
They had come pretty much to depend upon
themselves as being the very favored of God.
And yet here was this good shepherd saying,
I have other sheep that are not of
this fold and I know how they looked
at each other.
Is not he the king of Israel?
Are we not of the seed of Abraham?
What does he mean, other sheep?
And they had a hard time believing that
Jesus meant that there were any other sheep
beside Israel.
And even Peter, when he was full of
the Holy Ghost, didn't believe it.
That is, he couldn't grasp it.
He wasn't doubting it, but he just didn't
grasp it.
So one day when it was time for
prayer and he was morally able to receive
it, the Lord let down a great big
sheep.
One of these parachutes, you drop out of
an airplane, what do you call those things?
Parachute in reverse, upside down, in it.
In it there were all sorts of unclean
beasts.
There would be an anteater and an elephant
and a pig and a lot of things
that they weren't supposed to eat in Israel.
They were unclean.
And Jesus said, Peter, get up and eat.
And Peter, even after Pentecost, he talked back
to God.
He said, Lord, excuse me, but there's a
mistake here.
I'm a Jew and I have never eaten
anything unclean.
He said, look at these lips.
He said, nothing that wasn't kosher ever passed
these lips.
And the Lord said, Peter, when I call
it clean, don't you call it unclean.
Now get to the Gentiles.
Off Peter went and opened the door to
the Gentiles, opened the door to the Samaritans.
And Peter learned that the Lord had come
for the Gentiles as well as the Jews.
There were other sheep that were not of
that fold.
Now we find it just as hard as
Peter found.
Of course, in our Christian Missionary Alliance, we're
taught from our childhood up that the Lord
has other sheep.
But there are some churches where as soon
as you talk about other sheep, they say,
why don't you deal with the heathen at
home?
And then, of course, they never do anything
about it.
Theoretically we believe in the other sheep, but
practically we tend to forget the other sheep.
I hope this church will never forget the
other sheep, that there are other sheep that
are not of our fold.
Oh, there are a lot of applications here.
There are sheep that are not of our
Alliance fold.
I believe that.
I believe that there are Christians that are
not Alliance people.
Don't you?
Doesn't matter to me.
I believe it.
There are other sheep that are not of
this fold.
Thank God.
You know, they don't like to have me
talk like this, because it's hard on the
morale of our society.
But morales stagger along somehow.
We love God's other sheep, all of God's
other sheep.
The Nazarene sheep, and the Pentecostal sheep, and
the Baptist sheep.
Wet as they are, they're God's dear sheep.
The Presbyterian sheep, educated sheep.
And the Episcopal sheep, the very high-brow
sheep.
But as long as they're the Lord's sheep,
they belong to me, and I belong to
them.
And I belong to all the churches there
are.
Every church is my church.
And they can throw me out if they
will, but I still belong to the fold.
Other sheep that are not of this fold.
I want you to get broad-minded.
I got a hat here the other day.
And the first thing I did, I got
something on it, tried to clean it, and
it was no good.
So I took it down to somebody down
here who's supposed to clean hats.
And I got it back in three or
four days, shrunk, until I'd have had to
go to Borneo to have my head shrunk
to fit it.
So I took it back to the man
that I'd bought it from, and I said,
Mr. Balleen, I had this hat cleaned.
And look at it.
It just sat up on there like a
comic character in a show.
And well, he said, you'll have to leave
that here.
He said, if you'll leave it with me,
I'll dance on the leather band, and then
I'll put it down on this thing.
And showed me the stretcher, one of those
affairs, and two hats with a screw.
And you put the hat on, and then
you turn the screw.
And every hour or so you come give
it a little turn so it won't break
or tear.
Keep turning it, keep turning it, and finally
it gets as big as your head.
But that's the stretcher.
Oh, how I'd like to see all of
you people stretch until your heart's big inside.
Be ye also enlarged, says the Holy Ghost.
And Augustine said, narrow is the mansion of
my soul, O God, enlarge thou it.
Alan Redpath, preaching down the loop.
Somebody said to me, what do you make
of Brother Redpath?
I said, listen, I'd preach in a Jewish
synagogue if they'd invite me.
I'd preach down there.
They hadn't invited me, but I'd preach down
there.
I'd go to a Christian science temple, anywhere
and preach the word of God.
I'd say, let me preach what I want
to preach.
Oh, so in place of blaming Redpath, I
think he's doing a fine job.
Let him preach down there.
If they don't like what he preaches, kick
him out, and he'll be happy.
But this little narrow man.
Is he an Alliance man?
I don't know whether he's an Alliance man
or not.
The Alliance is only 70 years old, and
Christianity goes back to Pentecost.
What's the difference whether he's an Alliance man?
The word of God tells us that God
has other sheep, other sheep, and they're lovely
sheep, and they're his sheep.
And they don't belong to this fold, and
he's bringing them in, and there'll be a
day when they'll all be one fold.
But now, they're all scattered around.
And then there are the lost sheep of
the foreign lands.
I was in a meeting last night.
We were sending a Greek over to Greece
to preach the word over there.
Chris Pappas.
If you ever heard Chris Pappas, you heard
somebody.
You put the needle down off, Chris goes
and preaches the word.
The busiest man I know.
I said, Chris was jet propelled.
And I'm only a propeller job and can't
keep up with the power.
But away he goes just like a jet
propelled Greek, and he's going over there to
preach the gospel.
Now, I believe in that.
And I believe that there are other sheep
that don't belong to this fold.
Sheep that haven't a white skin, and sheep
that haven't eyes quite the direction our eyes
go.
You think that when the Lord died, he
only died for blondes?
Or that he only died for pinkish, brownish
people like most of us?
We call ourselves white men.
There isn't a white man here tonight.
Not one.
There isn't a white woman here tonight.
We're all spotted and freckled and funny looking,
aren't we now?
Look at yourselves, sister.
And praise God for grace to stand a
shot.
If you think you're a white woman, you're
mistaken.
You're not.
When you die, you'll be white.
But as long as there's blood in your
veins, you won't be white.
You'll be a sort of a very red,
very mild, very light.
And we, God, you think the Lord looked
at the skin of the man he was
dying for?
No, he looked at his heart.
You think he looked which way his eyes
went?
Oriental's eyes slope this way, and ours go
straight across.
Who's to say which is the better looking?
You're just used to yourself, that's all.
If your eyes had been born slanted, and
every time you looked in the glass, which
is frequent, you'd seen your eyes going this
way, you'd got used to that, you'd have
said, they're pretty, aren't they?
And the fellow that came along with straight
across eyes, you'd have said, isn't that a
weird looking outfit?
It's just depending upon what you're used to.
You think the Lord looked at the direction
your eyes run when he died for you?
No, he died for your heart, not for
the slant of your eyes.
So there they are behind the Iron Curtain.
There they are in North Korea.
There they are in many of the lands
in Asia and in Europe.
And they're waiting quietly the hour when the
chains will be broken, political chains, and they
can hear the gospel preached one more time.
If you want to read something encouraging, get
a copy of the World Report, United States
News and World Report for last week, and
read the report of that priest who came
over here, who was driven out of Moscow,
you remember?
Well, he was interviewed by the press, and
he tells the story about how they packed
the churches out there, not sitting but standing.
They have no seats.
And stand!
Only one Catholic Church, but he says the
Orthodox Church, the Baptist Churches.
They fill them up behind the Iron Curtain.
Over there where they throw their weight around,
and the secret police are looking to get
their men.
Still there are sheep, God's sheep.
God's black sheep in Africa.
God's copper-colored sheep in South America.
And God's yellow sheep in Asia.
He has his other sheep.
And I pray that this Church will never
forget.
I pray that we'll never, never, never forget.
And that we will see to it that
as we come up soon to the missionary
convention, that we'll have upon us a sense
of alertness and interest and keen desire for
the lost sheep and the other sheep that
are not of this whole.
Then I notice here the imperative.
He says, them also I must bring.
I must bring.
I want to bring, no.
I hope to bring, no.
I must bring them.
It is the imperative of Christian mission.
We must make some radical changes, we white
people, so-called, and begin to think differently.
We must begin to remember that we're no
dearer to God than the colored races.
We must remember that we haven't exhausted the
grace of God.
When the Lord blessed us, he didn't exhaust
his fount of mercy.
But it's an infinite fountain.
And while there are, as the brother prayed,
about a billion people in the world who
haven't heard the gospel, that billion is a
limited number.
You can put it down on a blackboard.
Or put a one and then put nine
ciphers after it, and you've got a billion.
But there's no limit to the grace of
God.
You can put down a one and then
start writing ciphers after it and keep on
for a million years, and you're no nearer
to exhausting the grace of God than you
were when you started.
If all the stars in the heavens were
ciphers, or all the grace hands by the
seashore innumerable were ciphers, and you had a
blackboard as wide as the sky, you could
write down ciphers and run up where not
even mathematicians know what to call it, up
and up and up beyond all human thinking.
And when you put a period, you'd still
be finite.
But the grace of God is infinite.
It goes on and on and on beyond.
So God's not exhausted his grace yet.
Don't you worry about that.
There's lots of grace for all the people
in the wide world.
Now he says, them also I must bring,
and I want to know how he brings
them.
And the answer is, they shall hear my
voice.
That is, they hear his voice in the
voice of his messengers, the voice of them
that go.
Now here's a little confusion of metaphor, but
I want you to put this down in
your mind and remember it.
He finds his lost sheep by sending his
found sheep.
That's the way he finds them.
He sends his found sheep to find his
lost sheep.
And while the figure shows us the shepherd
going after the sheep, what doesn't say there
is that the shepherd is also the priest
at the right hand of God, and that
when he goes after sheep, he goes after
sheep in the person of his under-shepherd.
And his under-shepherd, as it says in
Ezekiel, my sheep are men.
So he sends his found sheep after his
lost sheep.
And it's by means of his found ones
that he finds his lost ones.
And this obligation lies on us.
I don't like it that our missionary offering
isn't increasing very much.
It's a little, but not enough.
We ought to boost it and boost it.
And it ought to go way over the
top.
We ought to be doing something about this.
We ought to pray about this.
And we ought to remember there are other
sheep, and that he's seeking to find them
by means of those whom he has found.
And we must not fail him.
We must not fail him.
I'm a little bit afraid in this church
that we're enjoying our religion rather than imparting
it.
Suppose when our Lord fed the five thousand,
it had worked like this instead of the
way it did.
Suppose our Lord had given each of the
apostles a basket, broke the bread and gave
them each a basket, and said, Give ye
them to eat.
And they were all sitting down in fifties
on the green grass, hungry and weary and
tired and faint.
Suppose the Lord had turned his back.
And when he turned his back, the apostles
slipped up a ravine among the trees and
sat down and had a seat.
And the poor, hungry multitudes were where they
had been before, sitting there, still faint, still
hungry, still weak, still sick.
And the shepherd would look around, wonder what
had happened to his under-shepherds.
Where are they?
Here are my sheep unfed.
Where are my found sheep?
Off somewhere gorging themselves on the food that
was given to them for others.
That's what we've done in the United States.
That's what we've done in Protestantism.
And you consider the Christian Missionary Alliance has
730 missionaries and we're sixth largest in the
world.
Imagine that.
Southern Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, China Inland Mission,
two others, three others larger than us, and
then, two others, then we come sixth and
we've only got 730 missionaries.
That includes, the listings include the Baptists with
their millions and the Presbyterians with their millions.
Still, we are sixth with only 60,000
members.
What a shame.
What an absolute shame that we can live
in the lap of luxury and let the
world go.
Other sheep I have, said Jesus, and them
also I must bring.
And he finds his lost sheep by sending
his found sheep.
And he can only send his found sheep
as we make it possible for them to
go.
Then he says, There shall be one colt
and one shepherd on that great getting up
morning.
No more struggling flock here, no more struggling
flock there, but one great immortal victorious flock
in one glorious colt presided over by one
shepherd.
Nobody will say, what's your denomination?
They'll say, what's the good word this morning?
What did you find out new about Jesus
in the last 24 hours?
What new streak did you find in heaven
that you didn't know yesterday?
Now, what's your denomination?
Are you colt?
Or are you an Armenian?
Are you pre-millenarian or post-millenarian or
an all-millenarian?
We invent terms to divide the sheep.
You lie over there.
You chaw your coot over there.
You usually lie over there and divide up
the sheep for the Lord over little things.
You baptize by sprinkles, you lie over there.
You by mercy, you lie over there.
You poor, you lie over there.
You can walk around near the line, little
flock, little flock, looking out of the corner
of their eyes at each other.
Some old ram comes down the aisle, and
he doesn't belong to any of those flocks,
so he starts one of his own.
Dear God, what a mess we're in.
How foolish we are when they're all supposed
to be one flock and one shepherd and
one fold and one Father and one Lord
and one Holy Ghost and one baptism and
one hope of his coming and one bond
of peace.
The people of God are looking forward to
that great getting-up morning.
Someday he'll find his last lost sheep, and
when he finds his last lost sheep, there'll
be nothing to prevent him from coming back,
and he'll return.
Could that last lost sheep be you?
He says they shall hear his voice.
Have you heard his voice?
Have you heard his voice calling you in?
I don't know where you heard it.
Maybe you heard it in a hymn, a
song, testimony, the voice of a friend, a
sermon somewhere.
But if you heard his voice, you could
be the last lost sheep.
And when that one's in, then the wheels
of prophecy will begin to spin and the
wonders of revelation and the wonders of Daniel
and the wonders of the prophetic scriptures will
begin to unfold before our eyes as swift
as the return of the sea.
And there'll be one fold and one shepherd.
I'm glad I'm a Christian, aren't you?
Glad I'm a Christian.
Sometimes I wish I could get converted again,
just for the joy of becoming a Christian.
But I'm already in.
You can't get in twice, so here I
am.
God bless you.
Are you one that's lost?
Are you lost tonight?
If you are, the Lord's looking for you.
And he says they shall hear my voice
and I must bring them.
I must bring them.
You heard him?
God help you.
Let's pray.
O thou shepherd of Israel, thou shepherd of
the sheep, the Lord's my shepherd, I'll not
want.
He makes me down to lie in pastures
green.
He leads me to the quiet waters by.
O Lord, thou art the shepherd of thy
sheep.
We're so pleased with the arrangement.
We're so glad it worked out that way.
We're so glad that thou didst so have
it.
We wouldn't have felt comfortable if thou hadst
made Moses our shepherd.
Do you remember Moses broke some rocks one
time?
Smote another rock.
Killed a man.
Wouldn't have been comfortable if thou hadst made
Elijah our shepherd.
Because Elijah called down the fire.
O Lord Jesus, we're comfortable having thee as
our shepherd.
We're relaxed and restful.
For thou art a good shepherd and a
great shepherd.
An understanding, sympathetic, loving shepherd.
We thank thee, Lord Jesus, for being our
shepherd.
Thank thee for David.
But we're glad he's not our shepherd.
He didn't like a man, he ordered his
head off.
But O Lord, we thank thee thou art
our shepherd.
Now we pray thee for any who may
be lost this night.
For Jesus' sake we pray before the lights
go out in this building.
They may have found the shepherd, or the
shepherd found them.
Grant it for Jesus' sake.
Enlarge our hearts.
Make us big inside, bigger inside than we
are outside.
Make us as big as the world.
Make us as big as the whole Church
of God.
Inside, big enough to contain everything.
Let thy mercy be over us now.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.