Almighty God has made the most
full and the most brilliant display of all of His glorious attributes
in the work of rescuing sinners through the person and ministry
of the Lord Jesus Christ. God has many theaters in which
He displays His attributes. His attributes are simply the
outshining of who he is as a glorious and a magnificent God. They are
not little parts which altogether make up God. They are God in
all of his glorious unity shining forth in various ways displaying
who he is. His beauty, his intricate wisdom
seen in the complexity of a snowflake. his majestic power seen in mighty
snow-capped mountains, something of God's magnificence and something
of the overwhelmingness of his being seen in the pictures sent
back from the Hubble spacecraft and the vastness of the galaxies
of the universe. But I have asserted in my opening
sentence that God's most glorious display of all of His attributes
is made in conjunction not with the vastness of the cosmos, the
intricacy of the snowflake and all of the other things that
manifest God's beauty, God's wisdom, God's power, His overwhelmingness,
but they are manifested in conjunction with the salvation which God
has both planned, procured, and applied to guilty, hell-deserving
sinners. And one of the most marvelous
aspects of that salvation which most fully displays God's glorious
attributes is the absolute certainty of that salvation with respect
to all for whom it was planned, for whom it was procured, and
to whom it is applied. And whenever we begin to be acquainted
with this wonderful aspect of that salvation, namely that once
brought within its orbit, we are forever within its orbit,
Whenever we begin to be acquainted with that truth, often called
the perseverance or the preservation of the saints, There's a text
that one will find in systematic theologies, in devotional books,
and in other ways in which this aspect of God's glorious salvation
is set forth in Scripture. There is a text that again and
again comes to the fore, and it is that text to which I want
to direct your attention tonight in the time allotted. It's found
in John chapter 10, John chapter 10, And I shall read something of
the immediate context. John chapter 10 and verse 22
through verse 30. And it was the feast of the dedication
at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was
walking in the temple in Solomon's porch. The Jews therefore came
round about him and said to him, How long do you hold us in suspense,
if you are the Christ, Tell us plainly. Jesus answered them,
I told you, and you did not believe Me. The works that I do in My
Father's name, these bear witness of Me. But you believe not, because
you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I
know them, and they follow Me. And I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish. and no one shall snatch them
out of my hand. My Father who has given them
unto me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch
them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." Now
it is verses 27 to 30 that in a very special way are one of
those epitomizing texts in Holy Scripture which state in unmistakable
language that once we are brought within the orbit of the salvation
planned, procured, and applied by the triune God, once there,
we are forever there. And I want us to spend a few
moments looking at this passage under three very simple headings. First of all, the imagery employed. The imagery employed. In this passage, the Lord Jesus
likens himself to a shepherd, and all who have presently embraced
his salvation are likened to sheep. My sheep hear my voice. And this imagery of sheep and
shepherd was introduced earlier in this chapter, in the beginning
of the chapter. You have what for some is a difficult
thing to sort out because we are not personally acquainted
with the practices of Middle Eastern shepherds in the first
century, where he refers to himself as the door, and then later on
he refers to himself as the shepherd. Verse 4, When he has put forth
all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for
they know His voice. And a stranger they will not
follow, but will flee from Him, for they do not know the voice
of strangers. Verse 11, I am the Good Shepherd. And the Good Shepherd lays down
His life for the sheep. And then right on through that
section, He is likening Himself to a shepherd. and his people
to sheep. And in our text in particular,
verse 27, he speaks of the sheep as his sheep whom he knows and
to whom he gives eternal life. So from this passage we know
that the sheep are those who have come into this personal
relationship with the Lord Jesus and according to the context
They come into that relationship to Him as the Good Shepherd,
particularly the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the
sheep. Note again, verse 11, I am the
Good Shepherd and the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. Verse 15, even as the Father
knows me and I know the Father and I lay down my life for the
sheep. Verse 17, Therefore doth the
Father love me because I lay down my life. No one takes it
from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it
down. In this short compass of verses,
four or five times, in this context of setting himself forth as the
good shepherd of his sheep, He wants us to think of Him as the
Shepherd who supremely lays down His life for the sheep. So as
the sheep are related to Him in this personal, intimate way,
it is a personal, intimate relationship founded upon the Shepherd's act
of laying down His life for the sheep. Whoever the sheep are,
They are related to Jesus the Good and the Great Shepherd in
the context of His voluntary laying down of His life. That is, they are related to
Him on the basis of His voluntary substitutionary death in the
room and stead of His people. Voluntary, vicarious curse bearing
under the wrath of God. so that we should never think
of such glorious passages as Psalm 23, as some kind of general
ubiquitous relationship that all men have to the great shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. There is but one way in which
sheep become bonded to this shepherd, and that is in the embrace of
his cross. So the imagery employed is that
of Christ the shepherd, his people the sheep. The sheep bonded to
him in a very special way in the context of the shepherd who
lays down his life. But then having noted the imagery
employed, note with me secondly, the security affirmed. The security
affirmed. And it is affirmed both positively
and negatively. Notice the positive affirmation
in verse 28. I give unto them, that is my
sheep, eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one
shall snatch them out of my hand. I give unto them eternal life. On the basis of his laying down
his life for his sheep, That which He grants to them as the
donation of His grace is nothing less than eternal life. And according to the Scriptures,
eternal life is both a quality of life and a duration of life. It is a quality of life. Eternal
life is a distinctive kind of life. And what is the distinctiveness
of that life which is eternal? Jesus Himself defines it for
us in chapter 17 of this same Gospel. John 17, verse 2, Even
as you gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you
have given Him, He should give eternal life. And this is life
eternal. He is going to define eternal
life. This is it. That they should
know you, the only true God. and Him whom you did send, even
Jesus Christ. Eternal life is a quality of
life, and that quality is nothing less than a heart acquaintance
with the one true and living God and with His Son, Jesus Christ. This is life eternal, that they
should know you, not know about you, be acquainted with you,
but know you. As a man knows his wife, and
there is interpenetration of mind and soul and will and body
and knowledge at the deepest level, this is life eternal. Not to have God paraded by us
in the collection of notions and concepts that never touch
and win and woo and capture the heart, this is life eternal. That they should know you, the
only true God. and know Jesus Christ whom you
have sent, not know much about Him, His church, His ways, His
people, but to know Him as a living, loving person knows another person. This is life eternal. It is a
quality of life, but it is also a duration of life. We turn back
to John chapter 4. And we find these words from
the lips of our Lord Jesus in verse 14, in speaking to the
Samaritan woman, offering her eternal life under the image
of living water, these words, John 4, 14, Whosoever drinks
of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the
water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water
springing up into eternal life. What I give them here and now
of myself and my salvation is like an artesian well that will
spring up from within them, bubbling forever and ever and ever and
ever. It is a well springing up into
eternal life. And here the security of all
the sheep is wonderfully positively affirmed, I give to them not
a temporal taste and experience of eternal life. I give to them
eternal life, life that begins here and now as they come into
a saving knowledge of my Father and of myself, of my Father through
myself, for no one comes to the Father but by me, and he that
hath seen me hath seen the Father. He that does not honor the Son
does not honor the Father who sent him." He says that this
life into which we enter now is not only a quality of life,
but a duration. And in so stating, our Lord affirms
positively the security of all who truly experience eternal
life. I give unto them nothing less
than eternal life in quality and in duration." But then three
times he makes the affirmation negatively. Notice it. I give
unto them eternal life and they shall never perish. They shall never perish throughout
the rest of their earthly pilgrimage and life, and on through death
and resurrection and judgment, and as one eon rolls upon another
in the endless ages of eternity, they shall never perish. And, second negation, no one
shall snatch them out of my hands. As the great and the good shepherd
who lays down my life for the sheep, I gather my sheep to myself. I hold them. I protect them. I encompass them with my own
protective grace. No one shall snatch them out
of my hand. A third negation, verse 29, My
Father who has given them unto me is greater than all, and no
one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I actually
heard someone say cheekily, oh yes, none can snatch them out
of Christ's hands, none can snatch them out of the Father's hands,
but it doesn't say they can't jump out of His hands. Trying
to prove that this eternal life is nothing, is not really eternal
life, but it is life that we may possess if ultimately we
continue to make sure that we possess it. But the words of
our Lord Jesus do not point us in that direction at all. For
under the imagery employed, there is this security affirmed, and
the marvelous capstone to that security is verse 30, I and the
Father are one. One in our God-ness, in nature,
in what we are as father and son in the mystery of the triune
Godhead, one in purpose, that we should confer nothing less
than eternal life, as Jesus said in John 6, 38-40. I came down
from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him that
sent me. And this is the will of Him that sent me, that of
all that He has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise
it at the last day. This is the indefectible will
of the Father that Jesus has come to fulfill. So we've looked
at the imagery employed, Christ the Shepherd, all the possessors
of His salvation, likened unto sheep. There is a security affirmed,
but now, thirdly, note with me, their identity described. What is the precise identity
of these people who are in this unspeakably glorious position
of being Christ's sheep, those for whom He died? those whom
He has brought to Himself, those whom He and the Father hold so
that they can never, never perish. How are they identified? Look
at the text, verse 27. My sheep hear My voice, and I
know them, and they follow Me. And everything that follows is
with respect to these described. I give unto them and they shall
never perish. No one shall snatch them. Who
is the they and the them? It is the sheep. But what is
their precise identity as described by the Lord Jesus himself? And
surely none knows better the distinguishing marks of his sheep
than the great shepherd who dies and who lives to make them his
sheep. Well, there are two very identifying
marks simply stated in these words. My sheep are hearing. Present tense verb. My sheep
are hearing my voice. The identifying mark of the sheep
is the hearing ear. They are hearing my voice. Our Lord already asserted this
in chapter 10 in verse 3. To him the porter opens and the
sheep are hearing his voice. and he calls his own sheep by
name and leads them out. Who are his own sheep? Those
who hear his voice. Now, in what sense are the sheep
identified as those who are hearing the voice of Christ? Well, first
of all, they hear his voice when the great shepherd who laid down
his life for them in the course of their life history, effectually
calls them to Himself, speaking to them through the word and
promise of the gospel. Look at verse 16 of this chapter. Other sheep I have. They are
already sheep in the Father's eternal electing love and purpose,
in the Father's donation to me, all that the Father gives me. other sheep I have, which are
not of this fold, that is, the fold within Israel, them also
I must bring. The Good Shepherd, the Great
Shepherd, is not to lose any of the sheep, those whom the
Father has marked out in His eternal electing love and given
to Him as the donation of grace, given to Him the responsibility
of doing all that was necessary that they should enjoy a righteously
founded, a justly procured salvation. He must lay down His life. These
He must bring. And how are they brought? Look
at the rest of the text. And they shall hear my voice,
and they shall become one flock under one shepherd. They shall
hear. They shall become. No one can
claim to be a sheep of Christ because somehow he has pried
into the Father's eternal electing love. and has head laid bare
before him for himself or for another. Ah, yes, that's one
of those who are already Christ's sheep. No, none of us can know
he is Christ's sheep in terms of prying into God's secret electing
purposes. We can only know when we have
heard and have become. The other sheep, I know them.
They don't know themselves. But when I come, and in the Word
and promise of the Gospel, I declare to them their desperate need
of what I have done on behalf of sinners. And when I come in
the Word and promise of the Gospel and declare to them that as the
Good Shepherd I have laid down my life for wandering, hell-deserving
sinners who are like Isaiah's vast flock of sheep that has
gone astray, each one having turned to his own way They hear
the word of promise, he that believes on the Son has everlasting
life. Come unto me, all you that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Him that comes
to me I will in no wise cast out. Come, come, he says, they
hear my voice. He is not saying that in gathering
His sheep among the nations outside of Israel throughout the entire
age of the church that He is going to come and personally
in His glorified being speak with an audible, physical voice.
No. But it is nonetheless Christ's
voice that is heard in the proclamation of the gospel. And that's why
Paul can say in Romans 10, in that tightly knit chain of argumentation,
that if people are to be saved, they must believe on Christ. And how shall they believe in
Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? And when a preacher comes in
the authority of Christ, with the Word of Christ, proclaiming
the truth of the salvation of Christ, His true sheep are gathered
into that one fold when they hear His voice. Beyond the explanations
the preacher gives, beyond the illustrations, beyond the entreaties,
the appeals, the earnestness, the tears, the pleading, they
hear the voice that captures them and they can no longer resist. And they say, O Lord Jesus, You
who love sinners and poured out your life's blood on behalf of
sinners, how can I go on in the folly of clinging to that which
can only damn me by refusing that which only intends to give
me life and that eternal? And they capitulate gladly and
joyfully And in the disposition of repentance and faith, they
turn from their sin and their self-will and their self-determination,
and they embrace one whose love conquers them and subdues them,
wounds and wins them. The identifying mark of the sheep
is they hear my voice. They hear it initially, powerfully,
efficaciously, in the proclamation of the Gospel. But then it's
a present tense verb. It doesn't say, My sheep heard
My voice calling them, promising them rest, forgiveness, eternal
life, adoption into the family of God, the gift of the Spirit,
and all the blessings of grace. It doesn't say, My sheep heard
Look at the text. My sheep are hearing my voice. The mark of the true sheep of
Christ is that they have a fundamental internal disposition of utter
openness to the Word of Christ. To the Word of Christ when it
is promising, to the Word of Christ when it is commanding,
to the Word of Christ when it is comforting, to the Word of
Christ when it is convicting, to the Word of Christ when it
distills like gentle dew upon upturned flowers, for the Word
of Christ when it breaks in upon them like jagged lightning, nails
them to the pew and says, You are the man. It is your sin and
yours and yours that must be dealt with. If it is the voice
of Christ, they hear it. My sheep are hearing my voice. It is the infallible, identifying
mark of the sheep, they are hearing the voice of Christ. When that
voice calls them to humble themselves, confess their sins one to another,
when that voice calls them to cut off right hands and pluck
out right eyes to maintain moral purity, they hear His voice.
when that voice calls them to rear back on their hind legs
and resist the spirit of this world, when the voice of Christ
says, Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by
the renewing of the mind, they are hearing the voice of Christ. Have I beat it thin enough at
the edges? That's the identifying mark. Not some of them, the real
dedicated ones, the real super-duper fat, healthy sheep. My feet are
hearing my voice. But then notice the second identifying
mark. And they are following me. And they are following me. What they hear goes right down
to their feet. and what their feet do have a
direct relationship to the person of the great and good shepherd.
Notice he doesn't say, they hear my voice and they obey the commands. They hear my voice and they obey
the precepts. That's true. But you see, our
Lord makes it intimate and personal. They hear my voice and they are
following me. Not following their parents.
and doing just enough to get mom and dad off their back, or
just enough to persuade their elders that maybe the root of
the matter is in them so they can get baptized and come into
the church and get a Christian husband or a Christian wife,
because they do not want a worldly scoundrel for a life's partner. No, they hear my voice and they
are, what, following me. They are enamored and attached
to a person who loved them, laid down His life for them. So it
is not the naked Word. It is the Word dropping from
the lips of the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for them,
who is committed to preserve and keep every one of them so
that none of them will perish. They follow Me. As by my Word,
I lead them into the kind of personal life that marks them
out as my sheep. As my Word leads them into the
kind of domestic life that marks them out as my sheep, with husbands
loving, with sensitive, sacrificial, self-denying love that treats
their wives as their own flesh, as solicitous for the wife's
well-being, emotionally, physically, spiritually, as they are for
the members of their own body. I've never met a man yet who
had a sliver rammed up under his fingernail and said, Oh,
it's just a sliver under my fingernail. Take care of it three months
from now. No, no. I don't care what his job is, how important
he is. You get a sliver under your fingernail,
and I tell you, everything stops till you get it out. That's how
you're to love your wife. Her slivers are yours. You love
her as being your own flesh. Is it an emotional sliver under
the nail of her soul? Add her problem, let her work
it out. That's not following the voice of Christ who said,
Love her as Christ loved the church. Oh, yes, but no less
much, my sheep here. They follow. Oh, but I didn't
have a good example in my... Who cares what your father's
example was? You have Christ as your model.
Love her as Christ loved and gave. Are you following Him then? Are you following Him? In domestic
relationships, you children, obey your parents in the Lord,
for this is right. In social relationships, in church
relationships, in every area dressed by the Great Shepherd,
the mark of His sheep is They not only hear and say, Oh, isn't
it wonderful we heard the voice of Jesus today. They're not only
marked by the open ear, but by the willing and the obedient
foot. And that foot moves at the direction of the person who
has won them by His grace. In fact, it is only such who
have any grounds biblically to say they are His. Hebrews 5 and
verse 9. one of the few verses that uses
the term eternal salvation in all of the New Testament. And
notice what the writer to Hebrews says about that eternal salvation
and who has it. Speaking of our Lord Jesus, verse
8 of Hebrews 5, Though he was a son, yet he learned obedience
by the things which he suffered, and having been made perfect,
That is, having been made a perfect Savior, not from imperfection
to perfection, but from the perfection of unspotted, sinless humanity
to the perfection of empathetic humanity joined to deity in the
theanthropic person, having been made perfect, He became unto
all them that are obeying Him the author of eternal salvation. Oh, you say, I have that eternal
salvation. Oh, I love the truth. My sheep,
they are in my hands. None can snatch them. And the
Father's hand is over my hand and none can snatch them from
the Father's hand. The onus is on you to demonstrate
the identifying mark. He is author of eternal salvation
to all who are obeying Him. Our obedience does not procure
the salvation, nor does it ultimately secure the salvation. It is the
manifestation that we possess it. We are His sheep. My sheep are hearing. My sheep
are following Me. The language is clear, unmistakable,
and the Lord Jesus knows better than any of you how to describe
His true sheep. And He has described them. Their
identity is described. And then you see, nestled in
the midst of those two identifying marks, Jesus said, and I know
them. That is, the ones to whom I am
related in intimate, personal, saving relationship, the ones
that I know, that I am prepared to say, ah, that's one of mine. Open ears. and willing foot. If you're not sitting here tonight
marked by open ear and willing foot, Jesus does not claim to
know you. He does a better job of saving
than He's doing in some of you who say you're saved. If His love cannot conquer your
love of the world, and your love of self and your love of your
own will and your own way? What kind of love is it that
leaves you wedded to the very things that nailed Him to the
cross? I lay down my life for the sheep,
and the way that I give them the identifying marks of the
sheep is by the revelation of my love that breaks them and
subdues them and brings them into the orbit of being. willing,
hearing, obeying sheep. That's what the text says. The imagery employed. He's the
shepherd. His people are the sheep. The
security affirmed. I give to them eternal life.
A life of quality. A life of duration. Their identity
described. They are hearing my voice. and
they are following me. I say by way of application,
and I want to underscore so that none can mistake what I'm saying,
the ground of our position as sheep is nothing in us. It's what He has done, and it
is all in Him. He lays down His life for the
sheep. Why? Because the sheep are human
beings. who are guilty, inanimate, who
are dead, who are deserving of the wrath of God. And there is
no omnipotence in God Himself that can bring such people into
an intimate relationship of fellowship without the issue of sin being
dealt with. And so the ground of our being
His sheep is not in our hearing or in our following, our obeying. The ground is in His laying down
his life for us. But the proof that we have embraced
him as the Good Shepherd who has laid down his life is that
his love in sacrificial self-giving for us has conquered us and brought
us to the place where we love to hear his voice and we love
to follow him. It's 2 Corinthians chapter 5
in different language. The apostle says in verse 14,
For the love of Christ constrains us, it holds us in its grip. For we thus judge, if one died
for all, therefore all died, and that he died for all, that
they who live should no longer henceforth live unto themselves. But unto Him who for their sakes
died and rose again, wherefore henceforth know we no man after
the flesh, yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh,
yet henceforth know we Him no more. If any man is in Christ,
a new creation, the old is past, the new has come, and all things
are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ."
That is appalling language for the very truth we have in John. Chapter 10, the ground of our
acceptance is the laying down of His life. The proof of our
acceptance is that we've become part of the flock that He says
He recognizes and He's glad to be identified with. I know them,
those who are hearing, those who are following. They do not
follow perfectly, but they do so purposefully. They do not
follow with equal zeal, but they follow, as the old writers said,
universally. They do not mark out any area
of life and say, if Jesus has anything to say about that, I
could care less. I don't want to know what he
says. That's the problem with some of you young people, and
I want to get very blunt. You have marked out the area
of your music and your entertainment and said, I don't care what Jesus
has to say, if anything, about that area. That's my music. That's
my entertainment. That's my delight. Keep your
hands off. And you know it, and I know it.
How can you claim to be a sheep until you're ready to take every
single CD every single video and put it on a table and get
down on your knees in front of it and say, Lord Jesus, shepherd
who laid down your life, who died for sin, the sins of listening
to things I ought not, looking at things I ought not, Lord Jesus,
whatever is in these CDs that is displeasing to you, help me
to see it. Help me to recognize it. May
I be willing to smash it. You willing to do that? Yeah,
I know, you can biff and you can rationalize, but the issue
is you're not willing for the cross of the great shepherd to
be laid over your CDs and over your videos. And until you are,
don't kid yourself that you're one of his sheep. With many of
you, that's going to be the rubbing point. You live in a media-obsessed
generation. And the devil has his hooks in
the whole generation with the sounds and sights produced by
all the gadgetry. And if you're going to be real
and count for Christ this issue, you've got to settle. I know
you can go out of here and say, oh, Pastor Martin was on his
hobby. That's a cop out. Because you're not going home
and doing what I said. I've got no fear to go home and
take every CD I have. Even one that's got the best
of Johnny Cash on it. OK? All you listen to is opera
and hymns. What do you know I listen to?
Take every one of them. Say, Lord Jesus, if listening
to any of that puts any distance between you and me, in any way
fills my mind with things that ought not to be filled with,
Lord Jesus, I don't want it. I want you. I want nothing to
disturb my communion. I'm ready to take every DVD,
there aren't many, most of them have been given to me, and every
video and lay it before Him. Are you? Are you? You ready?
You ready to do it? You young women, you ready to
go to your closet and stand before every piece of clothing and say,
Lord Jesus, You say that the thing that should mark me as
a woman, the first thing God addresses when He gives particular
directions to women In 1 Timothy, where he's dealing with behavior
in the church, what's the first thing he addresses? Not your
heart, but your clothes. I will, therefore, that the women
dress modestly. And you stand in front of your
closet with every piece of clothing and say, Lord Jesus, I want to
hear your voice and I'm ready to follow you. Is this modest? And if you don't know, find an
honest dad. And if you haven't got an honest
dad, find one. There's a lot of us here in the
church. and will tell you. Until you're ready to do this,
folks, your Christianity is floating around on the issues that don't
really touch where you live. You ready to do that? You ready
to do that with every facet of your life? Dear folks, this is
Christianity. Attachment to Jesus. that we
do not willfully, knowingly seek to detach in any area. My sheep are hearing my voice,
and they are following me. It is not rules and regulations. It is a person who has won us
and overcome us by his love. And as we heard this morning,
we want an alternate, thoroughgoing Christian lifestyle that makes
the world look and say, We need this, and this, and this, and
this, and this to find a little sweetness in life, to suck a
little meaning. They are not worshiping at the
shrine of this, this, this, and this, and they've got a joy that
we know nothing about. What in the world makes these
people tick? And then we have the joy of giving
answer to everyone who asks a reason of the hope that is in us. Dear
folks, that's Christianity. That's Christianity. When you
worship at the same shrine as the worldlings, what in the world
is there about your Christianity that would ever whet their appetite? You can sit as my daughter and my sister
did the evening after the Lord took my beloved home. Someone
had given us months ago to my wife and me some, what do you
call them, Whatever, when they give you something, you go out
to a restaurant, you spend them there. What do they call them?
Not certificates, you know what they call. Coupons, whatever it is. My wife
and I were never able to use it. So because we had been under
a lot of stress, I said to Heidi and Joyce, I said, let's go out
to Steak and Ale and celebrate my loved one's homecoming. And
we sat at that table, and the young waiter came, and he saw
that we were a happy bunch. And I told him, I said, you know
what we're here for? He said, what? I said, we're celebrating
the fact that my wife went home today. She's in the presence
of Jesus. And through my tears, I told
him of what our joy was. I tell you, we had the ears of
that young man. I got a chance to speak to him about the Savior.
He's newly married. And I told him, God never intended
your marriage should be a two-way affair. He intended that Christ
should be at the center of it. We had his ears because he saw
something that he couldn't explain. Does the world see anything in
you that they can't explain? Or you just blend in with the
idea, well, you've got to be like them to win them. No, if
you're like them, you've got nothing to win them to that's worth anything.
That's the curse of this notion. We've got to bebop our music
and we've got to modernize our worship so the unconverted person
comes in, can feel at home. We'll play his kind of music.
We'll talk his kind of jive talk. Nonsense! Let the world then
come in. See our joyous, God-centered
worship and say, what in the world have these people got?
It's something I know nothing about. And then we're able to
tell them of the hope that is within us. Dear people, you're
going to tolerate me here as your pastor. I think I've got
a few more sermons left in me. This is where we're going by
the grace of God. Are you with me? Are you with me? My sheep
hear my voice. They follow me. I give to them
eternal life, and they shall never perish. Blessed assurance,
blessed assurance that once in Christ, always in Christ, and
at the end of the day not because we have so resolved and so mortified
and so determined to press on that we made it, but because
we've got a great and a good Shepherd who's committed to keeping
us. and bringing us safely at last
into His blessed presence. Oh, sitting here tonight, are
you one of His sheep? You say, well, if a sheep is
what you've described from the Bible, Pastor Martin, I'm not
one of them. Listen, Jesus said, other sheep I have. They're not
yet of this fold. They shall hear My voice. Have
you heard the voice of Christ in the preaching? Have you heard
something that's gone beyond what any human voice could do
in reaching into the inner chambers of your soul and causing you
to say, Oh God, I want to know the forgiveness of sin. I want
to know what it is to possess eternal life. I want to be able
to look death straight in the eye and say, Death, you're the
last enemy, but all you can do is chase me up to heaven. My
friend, That's waiting for you in Christ if you go to Him. He's promised to receive all
who come unto Him. May God grant that you go to
Him and you'll find Him a gracious, welcoming Savior and you become
part of that one flock under the rule and governance of that
one Great Shepherd. Let's pray. Our Father, what thanks can we
render to You that You have given us such a Savior as our Lord
Jesus? Lord Jesus, we worship and thank
You for Your willingness to lay down Your life for the likes
of us. We thank You that no man took
it from You. You laid it down, but You took
it up again. And You are the living Lord. We thank You that You lived this
night to receive any who will come to You. And we pray that
some will. We pray, Lord, that You would
dig out the wax in our spiritual ears, that we may be more keen
to hear Your voice, that You will take away the paralysis
that so often afflicts our feet, that we might quickly and cheerfully
follow You. Lord Jesus, help us that we may
be those sheep whom You gladly own, because men see in us and
You see in us those undeniable identifying marks of those whom
you own as your own. Thank you for your word. Thank
you for your presence. May your spirit seal that word
to our hearts. For your name's sake, we pray.