Go with me, if you would, back
to John chapter 10. John chapter 10. Let's read verses
15 and 16 again. Our Lord said, 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 of this fold, them also I must bring. And they shall
hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. I've told you this before, but
years ago when I first started preaching and first started traveling
and filling in for men in congregations that needed somebody to come
speak, I traveled to a congregation and a dear aged brother, a man
who is just so dear to me, he has been under the gospel for
decades and decades and decades, He was presiding over the service
that morning and he read scripture and he led in prayer. And one
of his requests in his prayer was, Lord, give us a greater
concern for men's souls. And this was a man who had been
under the gospel for a long time. And I love listening to men who've
been under the gospel for a long time. They sound tried. Do you know what I mean by that? They sound like the Lord has
proven their faith to them. And after all those years, that
man, his prayer to the Lord was, at his up in years age, his prayer
was, Lord, give us a greater concern for men's souls. That immediately made an impression
on me. As a young man sitting there
waiting to go up and preach, that just struck me. And that
impression is still here. It has stayed with me now all
these years. Lord, give us a greater concern
for men and women's souls. Give us a greater concern for
men and women's souls. Often those who know the truth
of God's sovereignty, When men and women have been
told and have had God's sovereignty revealed to them, often they
don't have great concern over men and women's souls. And I
want to qualify that by saying they deeply want men and women
to be saved. Deeply. I'm not saying that they're
not concerned whether men and women are saved. Very much, very
deeply, they want men and women to know the true God and the
true Christ. But what I mean by that is, often once we get
a hold of God's absolute sovereignty, we don't carry the burden of
responsibility. And it's for two main reasons.
Number one, it's because we know that God is in control of all
of this. We know He is. He's in control
of all of this. And we know that He has His people
numbered. We know He does. And we know that He is not going
to lose one of them. It's not going to happen. Every soul that Christ died for
is going to end up with him in glory. Every soul, all of them,
he is going to lose none of them. That's the first reason. But
the second reason is when it comes to witnessing the truth
to people, we know that if God does not give a man or a woman
faith in his word, we witnessed the truth of the word. Well,
the scripture says, and we know that if God does not send faith
into a man or a woman to believe the word, they're not going to
believe it anyway. They're just not. If a person believes, that's
God's doing. We know, this is what we know
in the whole thing, God has to do this. God has to do this. So that produces a natural and
very understandable hands-off approach. Does that make sense? This is God's business. We'll just let him do his business.
This is God's business. We'll let him do his business.
That's totally understandable. We are not soul winners. And that's what I mean by this
carrying the burden of going around and knocking on men's
doors and such on and so forth. Like some people bear the burden
to do. We are not soul winners. Christ
won all the souls that were going to be won on the cross of Calvary. He won them. They were chosen
by the Father before the foundation of the world. They were purchased
by the blood of the Son on the cross. And it is a done deal. It's a done deal. I'm not going
to call God's people to Him. God's spirit is going to call
God's people to him. You see what I mean by this? I'll preach the gospel to you
and leave you alone. We find great comfort and great
rest in that. I honestly do as a man who is
called to preach and preach and preach and preach and preach
and preach. That's what I do. I preach and
preach and preach. I find so much comfort in the
fact that God is going to do this. God is going to do what
God purposed to do. But as we uphold and we declare
and we rejoice in His will and His work and His purpose in all
these things, the one thing that we don't want to do is we don't
want to ignore His means. that he has declared he would
use in his will, in his purpose, in his work. He has chosen and
declared and commanded a particular means to be used in quickening
his people. And I wanna show us what they
are, okay? Turn with me to Mark 16. Mark
chapter 16. Mark 16, verse 14. It says, "'Afterward He appeared
unto the eleven, as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with
their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed
not them which had seen Him after He was risen. And He said unto
them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every
creature, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but
he that believeth not shall be damned. He said, go into all
the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Why is every creature going to
be saved? No, he or she that believeth
not shall be damned, he said. Well, isn't faith not of ourselves? Isn't that the gift of God? Yes,
that's right. Well, doesn't He know who He's
gonna give faith to? Yes, He does. The Lord knows
them that are His. He does. All right, well, then
why would we go through the great effort of preaching the gospel
to all the world? Why would we do that? Here's the only answer I can
give for that. Who are we to reply against God? That's the
only thing I know to say about that. Who are we to reply against
God? God said through his apostle
in Romans 1 16, he said, the preaching of the gospel of Christ
is the power of God unto salvation. Somebody will say, that's foolishness. That's absolute foolishness.
He said in 1 Corinthians 121, it pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. God is going to use
the means of preaching His Word to save His people. That's why
the Apostle Paul said, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. Woe is unto me. He is going to
use His Word, and here's what I want to emphasize. He is going
to save His people. He is going to. His Word is not
going to return void. Now this ought to give us great
encouragement in our concern for men and women's souls. This
ought to increase our concern to preach the gospel to men and
women. I hope this will give us great
hope, concern in our families, our loved ones that we so desperately
want them to come to a knowledge of Christ and come to a knowledge
of his truth. Preach the gospel, preach the
gospel, preach the gospel. Look at our Lord's wording back
in John 10. Verse 16, John 10, 16, he said, Other sheep I have." That's good news to me. We so
easily take on that same mindset that Elijah had. He said, Lord,
I'm all alone. Nobody else will believe this.
I keep telling it and nobody believes it. Nobody believes
it. They're not going to believe
it. We do the same thing. We say, we're it. This is it. Nobody else is going to believe
it. Our Lord said, Elijah, right
now, while you think you're all alone, I have 7,000 just in Israel. 7,000. Our Lord said in verse 16 right
here, He said, other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, them
also I must bring. You know what that means? That
means they are coming. They are coming. I want faith to believe my God. That's what I would like to have.
When the apostle said, Lord, increase our faith. What is our
faith increased in his word? What did he say? I will call
my people. They are coming. They're coming. If He must bring them, they're
coming. Why must He bring them? That
sounds like He has to. Why does He have to bring them?
Here's why. He promised to. He made a promise to, He swore
to, and He is a covenant-keeping God. David said, although it
be not so with my house, the Lord hath made with me an everlasting
covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, He is not gonna break
it. He's not gonna break it, He's going to keep it. Thank
God, He must bring His sheep to Himself. He said in verse
16, The sheep I have which are not of this fold, he said, them. He's talking about a particular
people there. Them also, a very particular people. And then he
said, I. He's talking about a particular
work. It's a work he did alone, him alone. Them, I. Verse 16, he said, must. I just love that word. That means
there's no possibility of failure. No possibility of failure. The
father said, behold, my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect, in
whom my soul delighteth, I've put my spirit upon him. He shall
accomplish judgment for the Gentiles. He shall not fail. He is not
gonna fail. No possibility of it. Verse 16
says, them also I must bring. In John 6, he said, all that
the Father has given to me shall come to me. My Father will draw
them to me. And I will raise every single
one of them up at the last day. And I'm gonna use the means of
my people declaring me to my people. That's the means I'm
gonna use. Now here's what I wanna say to us tonight. This is what
I want to honestly exhort us to, sincerely exhort us to. If this world is still turning,
God still has a people out there. If the world is still turning,
God still has a people out there. It is going to be a people who
you have a heart to witness the gospel to. I'm going to repeat
that. And the reason I say that is
because we all have people that we know who we have a heart to
witness the gospel to. God is going to save some people. It is going to be people who
His people have a heart to witness Him to. It comes through the
witness of the gospel. We witness the gospel right here. to people that we know and people
that we don't know. The Lord gave us a heart to witness
the gospel. Here's the building. One day
soon we'll have a sign. The Lord provided a TV broadcast
and whatever other means we are witnessing the Lord gave us.
If we didn't have a heart to do the TV broadcast, we wouldn't
do the TV broadcast. The Lord gave us a heart to do
these things. The Lord gave us a heart. Why did we build this? We wanted to. Why did we put
so many seats in it? We wanted to. The Lord gave us
a heart. We witnessed the gospel to people
we don't know. We witnessed the gospel to people
we know. The Lord is going to call his sheep And it's going
to be men and women who God's people have a heart to witness
the gospel to them. It's going to be people who we
want so desperately to come to know Christ so badly. It's not going to be the kind
of people who look like they're just naturally worthy of God
saving them. Our Lord said He didn't come
to call the righteous, He came to call sinners. They are going
to look like sinners. You are going to know some people who you have in your heart a
desire to witness the gospel to them because clearly they
are sinners. Whether they are gutter sinners
or self-righteous pew sinners, either way. They are sinners,
clearly they're sinners. They're gonna look just like
sinners. So these three things came to
my mind. I wrote these three things down
for myself and I'm just gonna pass them along to you. This
is something for my heart and something for what the Lord has
called me to do. I'm gonna pass it along to you, three things.
Number one, tell everyone. Give up on no one because someone is going to come
to Christ. Tell everyone. Don't give up on anybody. Well,
I told them and they didn't want to hear it. Don't give up on
anybody. If there is breath in them, tell
them again. Invite them again. Come hear
the gospel again. I really don't want to. I don't
care. Come on anyway. Maybe next week
I'll call you in six days. Tell everyone. Don't give up
on anybody. Why? Because you're going to
save them? You're going to call God's people to himself? No, because
this is the means that God said he would use. Tell everybody, give up on nobody
because according to the Word of the Lord God Himself, somebody
is going to come to Christ. Somebody is. He said, my sheep
will hear my voice and there is going to be, and this is exciting
to me, one fold and one shepherd. Christ our shepherd. Verse 14
right here, he said, I am the good shepherd and know my sheep
and am known of mine. I know them, they know me. Verse
15, he said, as the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father,
and I lay down my life for the sheep. You know what will draw
a sheep to Christ? Telling them about the God, their
God, who made himself to be a lamb. Their almighty God who made himself
to be a lamb. that he might deliver all of
his sheep from being sacrificed for their sin. That's what all
of God's sheep deserve. Sacrifice, sacrifice. The great
shepherd, the chief shepherd who gave his life for his sheep. He said at the end of verse 15,
I lay down my life for the sheep. Verse 27, right here in John
10, he said, 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. Neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. Never perish. Doesn't that make
you want to tell everybody? My sheep are going to hear my
voice. They're going to know me, they're going to follow me. They're never going to perish,
they're never going to leave my sight, never going to leave
my hand. That makes me wanna tell everybody,
give up on nobody, believing that somebody's gonna believe
the gospel. Somebody's gonna come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Somebody is going to be drawn by the loving, gracious, merciful
voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Somehow through this, through
this poor earthen vessel, and somehow through these poor earthen
vessels, Somehow one of God's people will hear His voice. And it's so. It's so. He will speak to His people.
And my prayer is that He'll speak to me. I want to hear your voice. He will speak to His people.
They will hear His voice. and they will follow him, they
will come to him, they will hear him say to their heart, you come
to me and I'll give you rest. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, I'll give you rest. The moment that sheep is drawn
to Christ, this is what he or she will say, the Lord is my
shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. I'm
not gonna want, he makes me lie down. Brother David Edmondson
tells the story of a great orator, a great speaker, many, many years
ago, who was often invited to banquets of queens and noblemen
and things like that to speak. And oftentimes his custom was
to stand and read Psalm 23. But this man on one particular
occasion, he was attending a banquet. He was an attendee. And he noticed
while he was sitting there, he noticed that an old gray haired
preacher was sitting at the podium. And when the time came for the
benediction to take place, the old gray haired man stood up
and he read Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall
not want. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures. He leadeth me beside the still
waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou
art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me. Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever. It's said that when that old
gray haired man finished reading Psalm 22, there wasn't a dry
eye in the place, including the great orator. And there was a man sitting next
to the great orator, and he said to him, I've heard you read that
song many times, but dear friend, I've never heard you read it
like that. And the orator, with tears streaming down his face,
looked at the man and said, I know the psalm. He knows the shepherd. He knows the shepherd. I know
the psalm. He knows the shepherd. I want
to know the shepherd. I want to know the shepherd.
Our Lord said in verse 14, I am the good shepherd and 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 of this fold, them also I
must bring. and they shall hear my voice,
and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Therefore doth
my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take
it again. No man taketh it from me, but
I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and
I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received
of my Father." It gives me great comfort to know, honestly, that
God has a purpose in all of this. It gives me great comfort to
know God has purpose to save a people. And I cannot wait to watch it
happen. It is happening. It will continue
to happen until the world stops turning. And I want to see our
Lord and Savior bring in His sheep to this place. There are
sheep in this town right now who are not of this fold. He
must bring them. They're going to hear His voice.
They're going to come to Him. They're going to follow Him.
And He's going to give them rest. He's going to lead them. He's
going to feed them. He said, as the Father sent me, so send
I you. And it's our great privilege
to witness him to as many people as we can. And that's our exhortation. Tell everybody about the shepherd.
Go tell everybody about the shepherd. You go home to your house and
you tell your family and your friends how great things the
shepherd has done for you. May he give us strength and heart
to do that. May he give us the courage and
the strength and the heart to do that. May Christ be declared.
May God call his sheep to himself. And may we all be counted a moment.
May we be his sheep. All right.