John 10:16
I Have Other Sheep
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And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Jn 10:16.
Sermon Outline
Scripture Focus: John 10:16 - Discusses Jesus' mission and its implications for world missions.
Main Points:
The Reality of Unreached Peoples: A staggering number of people (3.4 billion) in unreached people groups who lack access to the Gospel.
The Shepherd’s Other Sheep: Jesus mentions "other sheep" not of the Jewish fold, indicating His mission extends beyond traditional boundaries to all ethnic groups.
Foundational Beliefs for Missions:
Jesus owns the sheep by divine election and calling.
The sheep (believers) are predestined and given to Jesus by the Father.
Jesus’ mission is divinely mandated to bring these sheep into His fold.
Methods of Missions:
Jesus uses human messengers to convey His voice and message.
People hear the Gospel through the proclamation by God's servants.
Hope and Assurance in Missions:
Jesus guarantees that His sheep will hear His voice and follow Him, ensuring the success of the mission.
The eventual gathering of a unified flock under one shepherd, Jesus.
Sample Bible Study
1. Opening Reflection:
Read John 10:16 aloud.
Discuss briefly: What does the image of "one flock, one shepherd" mean?
2. Group Discussion: Understanding the Text
Contextual Background: Discuss the significance of Jesus referring to "other sheep" in the context of a predominantly Jewish audience. How might this have challenged His listeners?
Theological Implications: What are the implications of Jesus saying He "must" bring the other sheep. What does this tell us about the nature of God's mission?
3. Interactive Learning: Mapping the Global Mission
Mapping Exercise: Use a world map to identify and mark the 10/40 Window. Discuss why this is an area that needs missionaries. Then discuss why you think this area receives very few missionaries.
4. Scripture and Confession Connection:
Westminster Confession of Faith: Read Chapter X, Section 1. Discuss how this section on "Effectual Calling" relates to the idea of Jesus bringing other sheep into the fold.
Westminster Larger Catechism: Q&A 68 focuses on the word being made effective by the Spirit. How can we see this principle at work in missions?
Westminster Shorter Catechism: Q&A 31—how does the Spirit applying redemption to us encourage us in our mission efforts?
5. Practical Application Workshop:
Personal Mission Plan: Each participant writes down one actionable step they can take to contribute to global missions. This might be through prayer, financial support, or personal involvement.
Group Commitment: As a group, choose a missionary or mission organization to support. Plan how you can collectively contribute, whether through prayer, finances, or volunteer work.
6. Closing Prayer:
Gather togehte pray for one of the nations or people groups mentioned in the study.
Close with a prayer committing your plans to God, asking for guidance and effectiveness in reaching the "other sheep."
Weekday Devotions
Monday Devotional: The Shepherd’s Own
Scripture Reading: John 10:16
Reflection: What did Jesus mean when he said, "I have other sheep, which are not of this fold." The sovereign Shepherd speaks of those beyond the immediate Jewish fold—us Gentiles included—whom He also claims as His own. His ownership is not accidental; it stems from the Father’s eternal choice, selecting and gifting these sheep to the Son. Take time this morning to reflect on the breadth of Christ’s love and mission. Jesus’s love spans across all human barriers to unite us under His gracious lordship.
Prayer Prompt: Pray that the Lord would enlarge your heart to love and seek the welfare of those from different folds—people groups, nations, and backgrounds. Ask God to help you recognize them as part of the vast family that our Shepherd is gathering.
Tuesday Devotional: The Mandate to Bring
Scripture Reading: John 10:16
Reflection: Jesus states with resolve, "Them also I must bring." This statement highlights Jesus’s divine mandate to gather all His sheep into one fold. His mission is underpinned by obedience to His Father’s will. Jesus’s actions are determined by divine necessity. As you meditate today, consider your role in this mission. Are you aligned with Jesus in the great endeavor of bringing in the sheep?
Prayer Prompt: Ask God for the courage and commitment to participate actively in His mission. Ask the Lord to give you courage to reach out to the lost around you. Ask God to enable you to supporting global missions that seek to bring distant sheep into the fold.
Wednesday Devotional: The Method of Missions
Scripture Reading: John 10:16
Reflection: Our Savior promises, "They will hear my voice." This is a promise with assurance that His sheep will respond to His call. They will have hearts to hear as His word is brought to them. God is clear in Romans 10:14-15 that they must hear through the preached word. Reflect on how gracious it is that God commands His people to be a part of His life-changing gospel. Through our testimony others might come to recognize His voice.
Prayer Prompt: Pray for boldness to speak the gospel clearly and faithfully. Pray that through your words, others might 'hear' and respond to the voice of their Shepherd.
Thursday Devotional: The Confidence in Missions
Scripture Reading: John 10:16
Reflection: "And there shall be one flock, one shepherd." There is unity under Christ’s shepherding that brings great hope and confidence in the mission field. Our Shepherd’s control and commitment to gather all His elect and our efforts both evangelism and missions are filled with the hope of certain success.
Prayer Prompt: Pray and thank God that all every tribe and tongue will be shepherded by Christ. Ask God for help to keep you hopefull. Pray that the church worldwide would see the fulfillment of this vision—one flock under one Shepherd.
Friday Devotional: The Call to Follow
Scripture Reading: John 10:16
Reflection: This week’s devotionals culminate in the realization that our Shepherd does not merely call us to follow Him passively but actively. He has called US to be active in the mission to seek and save the lost. As Jesus pursued us when we were yet strangers. You are called to pursue others. How can you live out this call to follow Jesus more faithfully?
Prayer Prompt: Pray for a deepened commitment to follow Christ wherever He leads you. This may be scary. It may be costly. Especially in reaching those who are still outside the fold. But they too may hear His voice and enter into His eternal rest.
Automated Transcript
I greet you in the name of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is good to be together this
morning to worship our risen Lord and Savior. We're here because
Jesus is alive from the grave. There was that day 2,000 years
ago when his cold body was in the ground. And three days later,
the blood began to pulse through the veins, his heart began to
beat, his lungs began to fill with air, and he is alive today,
sitting on the throne, ruling and reigning in heaven above. And we get the privilege of worshiping
him today. If you would, turn in the Bible
that you have before you, or you can just listen along. We're
going to be looking at John chapter 10, verse 16 today. John chapter 10 verse 16 that
can be found on page 950 Jesus here is speaking to a mixed crowd
of Jews and there are Pharisees there we clearly understand that
and he gives a lot of details about what he came on this earth
to do and we're going to be looking in one particular verse here
which speaks really to the topic of world missions. Before we
read let's ask the Lord's blessing on the hearing and preaching
of his word. Father, we come before you and
we thank you that you have given us all that we need for life
and godliness through Jesus Christ. Thank you that you have given
us your Word, which sustains us on our pilgrim's journey. So we ask, Lord, that you would
open our hearts now, that we would be attentive to what you
want to speak to us today. And we ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen. John 10, verse 16. And I have, and other sheep I
have, which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and they
will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd. Thus ends the reading of God's
word. It is estimated that of the eight
billion people alive in the world today, 3.4 billion of them live
in unreached people groups. Unreached being defined as less
than 2% of the population have access to the gospel or know
Christ. According to the Joshua Project, an online resource,
there are approximately 17,446 people groups in the world. And 7,391 of them are considered
unreached. And then the vast majority of
these unreached or least reached people groups live in the 1040
window. And then inside that 1040 window,
that is where less than 3% of missionary work is being done. A lot of numbers here. According to another resource,
there are 189 unengaged, I'll define that in a second, 189
unengaged people groups, numbering something like 5.7 million souls
that are still beyond the reach of the gospel. Meaning that there
is no known individual church or mission organization seeking
to bring the gospel to those people. Every single day, People
are dying without having once heard the name of Christ or had
the opportunity to learn about the gospel. In Africa alone,
one person every five seconds enters into a hopeless eternity. And where we work in South Sudan,
there are six unreached people groups right now in this world. People who don't have access
to the gospel. These numbers can seem complicating
and hard to comprehend, but what these numbers demonstrate to
us is that there is a great need to take the gospel to the furthest
parts of the world. There is great need for people
to follow Christ, the Great Shepherd, to such places. For apart from
Him, there is no hope. In today's text, John 10 verse
16, this is a verse that is packed full of meaning for the missions. We often think of a verse in
Matthew when we think about world missions. If you were to go to
the book of John, I would submit that this is a good place to
start if you want to learn about world missions. This one little
verse is really just loaded. And it calls us to follow after
our great shepherd to the unreached in the world, to seek them out
and to see them saved. We are called to follow our great
shepherd, to seek out and to save the lost sheep. Well, to
understand this more, we're going to consider three different points.
We're going to consider the foundation of missions, We're going to consider
the method of missions and the hope or the confidence of missions. First, the foundation of missions.
It says, and other sheep I have which are not of this fold. It's kind of a simple message
today in a sense, but we want to understand more. What is Jesus
teaching us here when he starts with this imagery of sheep? It's
a familiar one, is it not? The idea that Christ is our shepherd
and we are his sheep. But just think about it for a
moment. What is it seeking to communicate to us when Jesus
says, I have other sheep, and what does it mean that we are
sheep? If you've ever worked with sheep, You know that sheep
aren't exactly those cute woolly little creatures bouncing across
the hills of Scotland or on your grandmother's crochet pattern
or something like this. Sheep are messy. Sheep are smelly. Sheep aren't the wisest of creatures. They need a lot of help. So kids,
if you're drawing today, you might draw some pictures of sheep.
You might draw pictures of sheep that are inside of a fence, inside
of a pen. You might draw some sheep that are still lost out
in the dark. So we learn something about ourselves, but I would
submit that more than getting down on ourselves about being
foolish sheep, We ought to understand that Christ is the great shepherd
who has great patience, great long suffering, that tenderly
cares for the sheep. He is patient with us. And as
it says here, Jesus has sheep. He says, I have sheep. He owns
them. They belong to him. You could
say they are branded with his mark. And why is that? How did
he come to have sheep? Well, the Father elected those
sheep. He elected people. He chose people.
Even from the beginning of the world, before the foundations
of the world, the Father set his love on a particular people,
a group of people, which are called sheep. And then those
sheep were given to the Son. John 6, verse 37. And all that the Father gives
me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast
out. You see there the idea that the Father is giving to the Son. Later on in this passage in verse
29, My Father who has given them to me, that is the sheep, is
greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of
my Father's hand. Staying in the book of John again,
John chapter 17, verses one and two. Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that the son
may glorify you since you have given him authority over all
flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. So Jesus has sheep and he has
them because the father has given them to him. Now, so far for
the Jews who are listening to this, this message is not too
offensive, but that is about to change. He then says, I have
other sheep which are not of this fold. What is the meaning of a fold? Well, usually a fold is something
that we do with the bulletin, maybe Saturday night or Lord's
Day morning. But in this case, the fold is
referring to the safe place where the sheep were kept at night
in particular. We could think of it as a fence.
But in the New Testament, the same word is translated as courtyard,
even palace. So it's the safe place inside
the compound, you might say. And so Jesus is saying, I have
other sheep that are outside this fold. And as we know, Jesus
is the door. He's the one through whom the
sheep come and enter. Again, so far the Jews are okay
with this. Except that he says, I have other sheep that are not
of this fold. And without giving a lot of explanation,
most scholars and biblical commentators understand that in this case,
Jesus is referring to the Jewish people. That's what he means
when he says, this fold. So this group of sheep, this
group of people. And you can think about how this
was the case for hundreds of years, right? God's chosen people
were the people of Israel, and with few exceptions were there
other people brought in. This is where the Jews start
to get uncomfortable, even to the point where later on in this
same passage they say, this guy's insane. Maybe he has a demon.
How could he talk like this? So this was shocking that Jesus
says, I have other sheep that are not of this fold. And we
might look at the Jews and think, that's, you know, how could they
think that way? But if you stop for a moment,
bring this into your life, right? This is not just meant for the
people 2000 years ago. This is meant to speak to us
today. How might you be slipping into a rut and thinking you have
an idea of who God's people are? The type of people that are God's
sheep? This is meant to expand your
mind to think about all the different types of people, different colors
of people, people from different cultures who speak different
languages, who live very different lives than you live. You're to
be thinking about how God has sheep in those places as well. And so we need to allow this
verse to speak to us and to not assume that we know who the sheep
are. The other day, maybe six weeks ago at this point, I was
driving down the path between one of our compounds, coming
home, and this big flock of creatures were on the path. I had to slow
down, and at first, I didn't know what I was looking at. They're
these creatures that, I mean, they're about this tall, they're
kind of long and skinny, and they have these big tails, big
fat tails. I thought, what is this? I'm
used to seeing goats and sheep. I mean, all the time, goats and
sheep, you know, common as flies out there. I thought I knew what
sheep were until I saw these things and they look like small
camels. But I came to find out that they're called either long-tailed
sheep or fat-tailed sheep, but they don't look anything like
the sheep that I was used to. I had gotten into a rut of thinking
this is what a sheep looks like. This is what a Christian looks
like. We need to allow this passage
to speak to us and to remember that God has people from all
different parts of the world that are sheep and he has yet to call. And then he says, I must bring
them. Remember this again is our foundation
for missions. He has sheep that are not of this fold and he must
bring them. He has been mandated. He has been commanded to bring
them. It's not a, I might bring them.
If the weather's nice, I might bring them. If they treat me
kindly, I will bring them." No. He says, I must bring them. And if you were to study the
musts and the shalls and the I wills of Scripture, well, let
me just say what Spurgeon says here. Spurgeon wrote, how greatly
I prize a portion of Scripture that is filled with God's shalls
and wills. We might add, I musts. Everything
he says is precious, but his I wills are particularly precious. There are the I wills of the
Psalms, the I wills of Christ, many of them. But when we come
to the I wills of God, then we get among the most precious things,
the deep things, the things which minister comfort and strength
to the people of God. This is something that Christ
must do. He must bring these sheep. Why? Because he's obedient. He is an obedient son to the
Father. John 6 verse 38, For I have come
down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him
who sent me. And this is the will of Him who
sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me,
but raise it up on the last day." The mission of Jesus. is to gather
in the sheep. This is why Jesus came into the
world, to glorify His Father by accomplishing His will by
gathering in His sheep. He must bring them. Bring them
from where? Bring them from lostness, from
the darkness, from the confusion, from the sin, from the deadness
of their trespasses in which they are living. And He must
bring them because they can't do it for themselves. All right,
we're not going to go deep into all the underlying doctrine here,
which there's a lot of. But Jesus must bring them because
they don't have the ability to save themselves, just like foolish
sheep often can't help themselves. We sinners, we can't help ourselves.
We need Jesus to come and save us, to bring us out of our darkness,
to bring us out of our sin, to work in our hearts, to change
us, to convince us to come. And so he must bring us. And
he doesn't just bring us out of something, but he then brings
us into something. He brings us into salvation,
into union with him. Into eternal life He gives us
hope and purpose, a calling, a future. So He brings us into
good pasture. For the Jews, they're surprised
at this. They, again, they just thought,
this can't be. Now, they should have remembered
passages such as Ezekiel, which we already heard read about.
God the Father being the Great Shepherd, He's going to gather
in people that are lost. But how did they get around verses
like Isaiah 42 verse 6, where Yahweh speaking to the Messiah
says, I am the Lord. I have called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and
keep you. I will give you as a covenant for the people, a
light for the nations. Those nations are called Gentiles
according to Luke in the New Testament. To go to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind, to bring them out of the prison,
from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness. And
then what's the extent of that? So the life of the nation, so
what extent? Isaiah 49 verse 6, I will make you as a light
for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
Clearly, the plan of the Father and the Son together was to take
this gospel, not just bring it to the Jewish nation, but to
then extend to the furthest ends of the earth. Who was this Messiah? Well, it's
crystal clear that it is Jesus. If you were to turn over a page
in John 11, John 11 verses 51 and 52, he that is Caiaphas, did not
say this of his own accord. But being high priest that year,
he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation. and not for
the nation only, that would be the nation of Israel, but also
to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
So from that day on they made plans to put him to death. So
Caiaphas, he didn't necessarily know everything that he was prophesying,
but he was prophesying that Jesus was going to gather in the children
that were scattered abroad in all the nations. This was the
plan all along. And he does this because he's
the good shepherd. And with this understanding that Jesus has
sheep and that he must bring them, this provides for us a
rock-solid foundation for world missions. And why we can have
confidence, which we'll look at more later, why we can have
confidence that Jesus is going to succeed in this mission. Well,
how is he going to do this? How is he going to do this? This
brings us to our second point, the method of missions. How is
Jesus going to save his sheep? Other sheep I have which are
not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they will hear my
voice. they will hear my voice." Another
way that can be translated is, they will heed my voice. They
will listen to it in such a way that they will obey my voice. It's not a hearing and ignoring,
but a listening to and responding to. The reason Jesus came was
to bring this message so that people could hear. So when it
says that People will hear His voice. This is what it says,
people will hear His voice. What do they actually hear? What
do people actually hear in their ears? I would submit that hearing the
voice of Jesus is like hearing your voice. Or hearing the voice
of someone reading the Scriptures. Sheep hear the voice of their
Savior through the lips of messengers. You can probably think of or
might know someone who came to Christ just as a result of picking
up the Bible and reading it. But that's an exception. If you
think about your own life, how did you come to know Christ?
How did you come to learn about the hope of the gospel? I can
almost guarantee that it was through a parent teaching, or
it was through a friend who invited you to a Bible study, or a co-worker
inviting you to church, and you heard through the lips of a servant
of the Most High, you heard the voice of Jesus and the Spirit
began to work in your heart. In a sense, we can say that people
are saved as a result of human messengers. How did Paul speak? In 1 Corinthians 9, verse 22,
this is where Paul says, I have done this so I can become all
things to all people that by all means I might save some. I become all things to all people
that I might be able to save some. Now before we correct Paul,
of his theology that he thinks he's so arrogant as to say, I'm
going to go save people. Don't worry. Paul has pretty
good theology. He wrote Romans. He wrote Ephesians. He knows that it's only Christ
that saves. So how can he say this? Well, he's speaking here
to human instrumentality. He understands how God has chosen
to work in the world. And he understands even from
his calling, when the Lord called him, that God uses people to
spread the message. Remember in Acts 26, verse 18,
God was speaking directly to Paul and he says, I am sending
you to the Gentiles. I am sending you to open their
eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the
power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins,
and a place among those who are sanctified by me in faith. What was Paul's job description?
To open the eyes of the blind. What an amazing calling. What
a significant and serious and weighty calling to go and open
the eyes of the blind. It's scary if you think about
it. And I would submit that this
passage from John is speaking to us today and would instruct
us to understand But we also are called to speak and to take
the message of the gospel to people because it's through broken
vessels, like you and me, that God works and God speaks to those
who have yet to hear. They're going to hear. Romans chapter 10. Verses 13
up through 17 speaks about this topic where it says, for everyone
who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then
will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how
are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And
how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are
they to preach unless they are sent? Just a little bit of a
logical argumentation here. How are people going to believe
How are people going to preach? Well, they're going to hear if
people are speaking, if people are preaching. And they're going
to go do that if they are sent. So people hear through vessels,
like you and I. Now, I'm putting a lot of emphasis
on human responsibility. I understand that. But I want
us to understand this today. So, You might think, OK, well,
if we don't open our mouths, if we don't take the gospel to
those people who have not yet heard, what will happen? If I'm sinful and don't obey
scripture, what will happen? Well, first of all, You shouldn't
be interested in disobeying scripture when scripture says go into all
the world or to speak about the hope that is within you or to
take the gospel to places. First of all, you should be interested
in obeying scripture. But if you do disobey. If people
don't rise up to take the gospel to the hard places of the world,
what's going to happen? Is God going to be stopped? Are
His plans going to be thwarted by our sinfulness? No. Just one verse to maybe frame
this and think about this. Esther chapter 4 verse 14. Remember,
there was persecution that was going to come. And her uncle
spoke to her and said, For if you keep silent at this time,
relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place,
but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether
you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this. God was given the opportunity
to be a vessel, to be an instrument in the Redeemer's hands, to bring
about some good. But if that person wasn't going
to obey, Redemption would come from another place. So there's
an opportunity here to get on board with what God is doing.
I'm thinking about world missions today. There's an opportunity
that we have before us to take the gospel to the world. And
the world starts right outside those doors. And there's work
to be done here. There's work to be done in the
state and in this country and in the world. Well, thirdly, The hope or the
motivation of missions. The hope or the motivations of
missions. Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them
also I must bring and they will hear my voice and there will
be one flock and one shepherd. We've said it already, Jesus
promises and says, they will hear my voice. They will obey,
they will heed the call. This gives us a promise that
the unreached people, the people of yet to hear the gospel, they
will hear, they will respond. It's a guaranteed win. And if
you want proof positive that this verse is true, just look
around the room. There are certainly sheep here
in this room that at one time were not of this fold. And God
brought the message of the gospel from that place so far ago in
the Middle East. And He, through His vessels,
through His people, by the power of His Spirit and Word, has found
lost sheep like you and me. It is effective. The gospel is
at work. Jesus is building His church. And if this is you, if you have
heard the gospel, if you have responded to it and have been
living in the light, this verse ought to move you to praise and
thanksgiving. Because you were one of those
foolish lost sheep. You had no hope apart from Christ. You were confused. You were dead
in your sins and trespasses. And so we just praise God that
He was gracious to reach out and to save. And we praise Him
for that. And you can remember what it
was like to hear the sweet call of the Savior. The cross, which
was once offensive, became a thing of beauty, a thing of worship
and adoration. However, it's possible that some
of you here today have not yet heard the Gospel. You have not
yet heard it in such a way that you've responded to it and heeded
its call. And if that's you, and if you
are hearing His voice calling to you today, respond in faith
and repentance, following after the Shepherd. If you hear His
voice today, do not harden your hearts. After applying these
words to our own lives, we need to think about how it
gives us that hope and confidence for the world. People will hear. They will repent. Their eyes will be opened and
they will respond. Remember the I shalls and the
I wills of Scripture. All that the Father gives me
will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast
out. Like lost sheep, they will hear His voice, and they will
come. Yes, there are discouragements.
There are challenges. The reason why There are so many
people that have not yet heard the gospel. Humanly speaking,
it's because many of those people live in some of the hardest places
to get to. Places that are hard to live.
And so, we need to think about who will go to the places that
are dirty, to the people that are despised. There are people that will hear.
Paul was also discouraged at times. He was tempted to give
up, to think it's too hard. It's too scary to talk to my
neighbor. It's too scary to talk to that person and lie at the
grocery store. It's too scary to think about going to hard
places in the world. Paul was also discouraged. And the Lord
spoke to him in Acts chapter 18 verse 10. The Lord said, do
not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent. For I am
with you and no one will attack you to harm you. For I have many
in this city who are my people. I have many in this city who
are my people. Just think of the confidence
that that must have given to Paul to think, There are people
out there. I don't know who they are. I
don't know when they're going to respond. But the Lord has
said they're out there. And we can understand that there
are people still out outside the church, outside the fold
that have yet to be brought in. And they will hear. There are
people I'm willing to say, to go on record as saying, there
are people in Iowa that the Lord still wants to save and He is
going to save. And we need to take the message
of the gospel to them. There are people in this country,
and as we've already noted, there are millions of people in this
world. People groups from which the
Lord is going to gather people in, to draw them in, and they
will hear. This is no wild goose chase.
This is no fool's errand to think that people are going to hear. We need to take this promise.
Take this promise, apply it to our own lives and allow it to
move us to action. To become the hands and feet
of Jesus in this world. Taking this good news this message
of hope. And we need to speak in such
a way that people will hear the voice of the Savior. This is
a beautiful thing to see when people hear the voice of the
Savior. We had the privilege recently of giving audio Bibles. So the Bible recorded on an audio
device and give it to someone who was a believer, but they
came to faith through a different language. They came to faith
through Arabic, which wasn't their mother tongue. And when
we were able to give that audio Bible to them, it was a beautiful
thing to see. I mean, just his eyes were welling
up as he heard the voice of his Savior through the written word
as it entered his ears. It is a beautiful thing to see
Jesus speaking to his people. The second reason for hope is
that Jesus says there will be one flock and one shepherd. There
will be one church, one body, under one leader, one king, one
great shepherd. In the Greek, this flows a little
more smoothly. The Greek word for shepherd is
poimen, and the Greek word for flock is poimne. So to kind of
bring it into English language, we might say something like,
there will be one pastor and one pastor. What a beautiful
picture this is. Jesus gathering into one, people
from every tribe, tongue, and nation into one, following the
shepherd. Again, different countries, different
skin colors, different marks on their skin, different things
that maybe don't look really familiar to us. These are the
types of people that Jesus is gathering in to his group of
believers, into the sheep. Isaiah 56 verse 8 puts it like
this, the Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares,
I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.
Matthew 8 verse 11, I tell you, many will come from east and
west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in
the kingdom of heaven. God's desire is to see the message
go out and for his sheep to be brought into one flock. One fold, one church. In the place where there will
be neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free. And we can have confidence
that they will hear. As we wrap up, I want to ask
you, what is your heart's desire? What is your bent towards the
nations? God's heart clearly is to see
this message go to all places. What gets your heart excited? What are you interested in? What
are you passionate about? This application, it starts with
the youngest in our midst. Perhaps those who are still in
diapers, right? We need to bring the gospel into
their lives in such a way that they can understand so that they
can hear and respond. And then it extends to our families,
to our neighbors, so forth and so on, starting with Jerusalem,
Judea and all of Samaria. But we always should have that
outward momentum, that outward bent, that outward thrust. You need to embrace these promises.
Allow them to change our lives. And when we get too comfortable
in our pew, we need to remember this verse. This verse is to
function as a little bit like a thorn or a needle that you
find in the pew and you sit on and it kind of gets you to move
up, move out. If you get too comfortable here,
allow this verse to prompt you outward and so then today and
tomorrow and for the rest of our lives with hearts full of
faith follow after your great shepherd who is on mission to
seek out to speak to and to save the lost let's go lord in prayer our father we thank you that
you have sent your son into the world to save Save us, broken
sinners who are not worthy of anything but your condemnation
and wrath. And yet in your abundant loving-kindness and mercy, You
drew us to Yourself. And so, Lord, today we worship
You, we thank You, and we pray, Lord, that we would be obedient
in following our Great Shepherd, our Savior, who calls us to praise
Him and thank Him, and then to follow Him, to bring this beautiful
message of hope that we have to a fallen and broken, perishing
world. Father, we pray that You would
gather in those people who are in the farthest ends of the earth,
and that you would raise up people to go. Perhaps even some in our
midst here today, Lord, you might use to take the gospel so that
Jesus might save his sheep. We thank you for this great work
that you're doing in our midst and in the world, and we pray
that you would do this for your namesake, for your glory, and
we pray it in Jesus' name.