September 15, 2024, Mission Report and Sermon By Pastor Dallas Elder (The Ministry Director for Grace Covenant)
Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, we give you thanks that you impart to us your holiness. You make us like you, not just in your sight, but for all eternity. We will be like you.
Thank you, Lord, that you have completely defeated sin, not only its consequences, but its power and its dominion. And you have brought us into the kingdom of light, into the kingdom of your son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. And you’re making us like Jesus.
Paul said we don’t know what we’ll be like, but we’ll be like him. Amen.
And, Lord, that is great news. That is great news. Anybody in here sick and tired of being less than you want to be? Yep. Well, you’re going to be like Jesus. Amen. Amen.
All right, good. And one of the guys who’s closest, just as close to Jesus as I have run into, is my friend Dallas Elder. All right, so Dallas is the ministry director for Grace Covenant. He is a ministry elder. He is the trifecta of ministry elders. His last name is Elderez. He is the ministry elder for Grace Covenant.
And he’s no longer a youngster. And so the trinity of elders will be speaking to us tonight. He’ll be sharing some stuff about Grace Covenant, but also sharing with us the Word of God.
So, Dallas, we’re very glad you’re here. Welcome.
I just want to say this, his comment about me being elderly and the thing is that I actually dye my hair. Yeah, I dye my hair. I’m actually just in my early fifties, but I dye my hair so I can get the senior discount. So that’s just it.
Well, listen, it is really good to be with you. I want to share some things. Kevin asked me to share kind of an overview or some updates regarding our ministries in Grace Covenant.
First of all, let me start out by saying this, that I so much appreciate the Firehouse Church here in Poulsbo. All of your partnership, the ways that you get behind us, these things I’m getting ready to show you aren’t possible without your participation. So I want to give you thanks in advance for that.
Well, listen, so I can get my deal to work here. Chaotz, let me know when we’re ready. There we go. All right. Okay. Thank you.
This one, that, first of all, these are the nations where we have ministry. We have a network of churches in the US, but then also in these nations, you’ll see.
And so I’m going to share some things about a few of these nations that the Lord is doing. First of all, just let me point out that we’re now in Mexico and Ensenada and have a ministry there.
One of our new missionaries is Kayla Lawmaster. You’re going to have an opportunity to tell you a little bit more about her.
And then also Ecuador, where there is a ministry with the Oriannas. I’ll share a little bit more about them as well. But those are two new nations where we happen to be.
This was our Midwest men’s conference last year. you’ll see Kevin in the background. That’s his friend Eric Roberts. How many of you know Eric? Okay. All right, good. So they came and shared in the men’s conference.
That’s there. And then, of course, Kevin, he showed up at our conference in March in Kansas City this year. You can ask him what all of that means.
Anyway, I want you to know that he was there. And next year I’d like for some of you to come. You don’t have to wear a onesie. You don’t have to wear a onesie, but I’d like to get some representation from the Firehouse Church in Poulsbo so that you can experience that.
This is Gianni Rucker. She has a ministry that’s based in Kansas City. It’s victim services, faith-based victim services. She reaches out to trafficked and traumatized individuals.
The ministry goes on. She has her story. She was raped as a freshman in college at Arizona University. She was there on a volleyball scholarship and from that needed the healing that would come. But then also has become an advocate in what ends up being a crisis point that’s an epidemic around the world relative to trafficked individuals.
So apostle Pam Brown is on the right. That’s Gianni’s family, and that is their facility in Kansas City. And then, of course, we were there for a fundraiser. That happens to be my wife and my daughter. That’s on your right. And that’s Gianni. So that was, like I said, a fundraiser last fall.
In the center there, that’s Marquis and Michaela Harris. And so Marquis has recently become the executive ministry director of Grace Covenant. So he will be working with me in my office. And he starts tomorrow. Or, yeah, tomorrow. So they came by recently. That’s their little one that just arrived.
Her name is Grace Lynn. And so we’re looking forward to the help that he’s going to be able to bring into our office and all the ways that the Lord begins to shape that ministry. This is our Next Gen ministry.
We are identifying our ministry leaders for the next generation and wanting to invest in them. So we’re bringing around the community. This is our California constituency. Kevin’s got relationship in that picture, and this was our Next Gen gathering as we came together in March in conference.
We always have dinners and fellowship opportunities, so we are building the community and also making the investment in them.
Fran O’Brien, maybe you’ve met her before. She’s a Native American from Oklahoma. She is Kiowa, and she leads our ministry called White Buffalo Ministries. It’s an outreach to Native Americans and the unification of Native Americans taking place in our nation.
After, as you know, for a number of other people groups, a history of some hurts and to bringing them and unifying them, ministering to their particular needs.
Suicide rate among Native Americans, six times the national average. Same thing for addictions, drug abuse, and just some real hopelessness that’s there.
So we have the opportunity to serve with her. This was a team that we send every year to reach out to Native American churches in Oklahoma with VBS. And so you see some of those needs then being met there.
This is the Impact Center. This was kind of a combined group with Comanche kids. It’s our first time to reach some Comanche children.
And so we’re going to focus in on that Comanche church that ends up being there, and that will be something we’ll be doing next year.
If you would like to go on one of our mission teams, the things that you’re seeing here, you have the opportunity to participate. I speak to all of you, but for some of the young people, that would be a great experience for you to come and be a part.
This is Kayla Lawmaster. She’s from Southern California. She was a gal that went to, I think, UC San Jose. I can’t remember… Anyway, one of the University of California schools to learn about how to do filmmaking. Her dream was to go to Hollywood and make it in the industry.
In the midst of that, she got saved. She then got in contact with some folks who were reaching out and creating animated Bible stories for the deaf. You talk about an unreached people group, the deaf, in lots of times. You know, we have programs in first world nations and other nations. They don’t know what to do with the deaf.
They can’t communicate with the deaf. Often, they don’t get any education, and certainly, they don’t get to hear about God. So, this is an incredible ministry.
I hope to have her. Kevin wants to have her drop by and see you all sometime. She’s in Ensenada, Mexico. My wife Connie and I will go and visit her in November. She’s a brand new missionary. She’s about 80% to 90% of full-time support. She was actually serving. She moved to Ensenada, was serving there and working remotely, doing TikTok videos for apparel, working for a company.
That company downsized, and she had a pretty significant job. It was a really sweet deal to make the kind of money she made, live in Mexico, and serve the needs that were there as she had time. Well, they laid off a number of folks, and her job left. So then she was saying, okay, what do I do? And the Lord said, I want you to do this full time. I want you to trust me that you’re going to receive support. Bless her heart. Since last December, this is the level she’s at.
So we look forward to seeing her at least being able, she works full time, at least being able to be supported for what she does full time by the end of the year.
These are new missionaries. They spent. This is Kim Anguito Oriana. She actually graduated from Ohio State and then got saved around 22, as she had graduated from college, and within nine months. This is very unusual. The Lord called her into missions, and at that point, she really wanted to have a husband. She wanted to have a family. That was her desires.
But she laid all that aside and said, I’m never going to be able to do that. I will go and follow Jesus.
She moved to Ecuador to serve in the area of orphan or foster care, and that’s where she met her husband. These are the three children. One of them just started at Grand Canyon State University, but we are delighted to have them with us. They were part of another mission, served for 20 years.
They came to a transition time, and so they now have connected with us. They serve in that area of orphan care, foster care, leadership, and training.
Listen to this. Listen to this. Ecuador has had such a dysfunctional system that has been so traumatic recently. In June, I’ll tell you one story. She went to Ecuador and was in a town near the jungle where there was an orphanage. There had been a murder of an orphan. There had been molestation of orphans, and a number of those orphans had tried to commit suicide.
So the Ecuadorian government realizes the incredible problem that they had. They came to Kim and her foundation and said, would you please give our governmental leaders training so that we’re going to be able to have better trauma and orphan and foster care, a better system.
And so she said, yes, we will, but our training is Christ based, so we are a faith-based Christian ministry. And if you want our training, it will include Jesus. And they said, please give us that training. Just an incredible story.
And so these are some of the children there who are benefiting. We have to be pretty sensitive on the pictures that we show, but at least this was one that we could show.
These are our missionaries in the Dominican Republic. Our missionaries in the Dominican Republic will probably host around 200 people on mission teams in a year.
These are our new directors. There’s Tyler and Callie. Franca. Hannah Hus is from Florida. I was trying to think of her town. She has recently come. She was full time. She’s started her second year.
So this is the team, and they feed about 100 street kids a day. And then they share Christ with them and have a number of activities to get them off the street and teach them life skills and values.
This is one of the barrios that we’ve ministered in for a number of years. I was there with them in April. So this is some of us who are walking down that street. The relationships they have are incredible.
And then these are the things. This is the property that we own there.
These are the classes that go on. This is music class. They’re singing Jesus bell, Jesus, excuse me, jingle bells in Spanish.
This is English classes. My wife and I were there to participate on the site. It’s been such a beautiful work that the Lord has done. And they just launched in August a preschool on the property, which is huge to be able to get the children before they get into a bunch of dysfunctional life, share Jesus with them and bring them into a safe place.
So we’re shifting gears now. This is Pastor Raul. Pastor Raul does evangelism and church planting in Peru. This is around the Amazon rainforest. There are a number of rivers that flow into the Amazon, with a number of villages along the way. So he takes a boat and then he will visit because that’s the only way to get there. Take a boat, visit the place. And that’s where they’re doing church planting.
One of the projects has been to purchase a new boat because the old one is wood and rotting.
And so we just received provision to be able to get a metal bottom boat that’s going to help in that. These are the folks who come to know Jesus, and they’re coming down to the river to be baptized.
So, a number of people are coming to know Jesus there through those efforts, as well as there are a few churches that have been planted from those efforts.
This is Buen Pastor. This is the prison ministry in Paraguay, led by Walter Vega. Walter has worked with us for a number of years.
An incredible invitation to be able to work with them in this prison for women to bring faith, to bring scripture, to bring bibles, and a reentry program.
So, they sign up for this opportunity to receive the training that helps to position these ladies for when they come out of prison. It gives them a foundation of faith. It is helping them with the way that they think, and they have some life structure so that they will be successful as they reenter society.
And these are the materials, then, and the booklets that they use. So they will go through, I think, a six-week, eight-week course, and the ladies there in prison will go through that. These are some of the ladies who are taking that. And that says, if you know Spanish, it says new life in Christ.
So Bill Murray, Eddie, in Spain, they’ve been our longest. Bill and I have been friends. We kind of got called into ministry around the same time. We’ve been friends for a long time.
And then, as we began Grace Covenant, the Lord called us to do that. He was our first missionary. And so, they’re in Madrid, Spain, in that area anyway. He’s been a church-planting pastor. There are a number of other ministries that they do.
The Lord recently called them back to a church that they planted a number of years ago to now lead that church. It had dwindled down to 30. They were very discouraged.
And so they now have taken that helm, by the way, on the right, that ends up being a Sunday school class for autistic children. So a tremendous outreach there at the church.
You see some of the activities there. I think that’s with youth group and some of the things that are going on then in the church.
This is Rob and Laurie Mangus. Have they been here? Okay, Rob. So, you know, Rob and Laurie. Kevin is going to be going in just a few weeks to be with Rob and Laurie.
That’s one of our point pastors there in Ghana. And so these are our ministers. So at that conference, these ministers are going to be coming, and they represent the five nations where we happen to be. There will be some other ministers there as well, but these are the ministry leaders in those nations.
So from left to right, that’s Pastor Barry from Nigeria, Pastor Sante from Togo, Pastor Roland from Benin, Pastor Alexander from Liberia, and then Pastor George from Ghana. And this will be what the conference looks like.
So that’s on the property that we have. That’s where not only our missionaries live, they will help to house the pastors. Kevin will have a room there, and hopefully those missionaries won’t mistreat him. The air conditioner works, and they have electricity. Then, of course, that’s where the conference is held. So it’ll be a great time.
Pray for your pastor as he goes. I don’t know if I shared this. I think I did. When I was here last year on this site, we had a church, and the pastor was Pastor Paul.
And so while the church was closed, they sprayed accelerant into that church just as a spiritual attack, if you want to say that. They lit it, and it burned so hot, it melted the tin and burned all the plastic chairs on the inside. I mean, it was just totally ashes and cracked the walls.
And so anyway, I shared that with the Grace Covenant Ministry family. Ats, you remember that? There was an outpouring of provision. And so this is what has risen up from the ashes.
So when I was there last October, this was the picture that I took. Kevin, I probably should have put the picture up that we rode motorcycles. We were on the back of motorcycles to get to that place. So maybe you might just want to bring your leathers as that may be some. I think they repaired the road, and probably the Manguses will get you there. But anyway, that’s what the Lord has brought about. You can see where they happen to be.
I understand that there are doors and windows that have been covered at this point. They still need to finish the inside and do the floors, those kinds of things.
It’s a new church that’s there, Pastor Julius, so you can see the primitive beginnings of that church plant. And this is Pastor Alexander and his wife de Conte in Liberia. And so that’s the church that’s being constructed there that we recently were able to help with putting the roof on it. Now it needs the windows and the doors.
And I just want to say, praise the Lord. We have received provision to take that project to another level. So windows, doors, and I. And maybe floors as well. So they’ll have some, a few other things, but they’re invested in the whole project.
Sorry. And so this is where they’re at now. This is a rented facility. The landlord came to them and said, listen, we can make more money if you move out. So the Lord has provided to help with the land. They were involved in that and then the construction to this place. So they’re getting very close.
You can see the congregation that ends up being there in Buchana City, Liberia. This is Pastor Togo, and our pastor Sante, who is in Togo. He just has this anointing for evangelism. There was a boldness about him, about proclaiming Jesus where Jesus hasn’t been proclaimed.
There are a number of villages that end up being out in the country, and they worship the devil. Witchcraft is a part of the culture. In a number of those villages, that’s just a way of life. They practice voodoo. Pastor Sante then goes and preaches.
Sometimes there are healings. There’s even been a person who was raised from the dead. There have been other kinds of miracles and touches, even witch doctors coming to faith in Christ Jesus.
The story is, you see this man here who has the Bible in front of him. He is a witch doctor. And so in the culture, like many other cultures, they actually still have sacrifices. So the curse, if you will, the cursor, will land on a person from the other witch doctors and said, you are the one that needs to be sacrificed.
They put a curse on the person, and because of what they believe, they get sick and they die. There’s power that the devil has. It’s limited; it’s not the power of Jesus. And yet, at the same time, that person gets sick and they ultimately die.
Sante came and preached, and this witch doctor gave his heart to Jesus, and he’s had health and healing, and he was given a Bible. So, Bibles are a huge deal in these villages.
Sorry, I went the wrong way. This is Pastor Rowland in Benin. Of course, he’ll be at the conference in Ghana. And so this is a new congregation meeting under a mango tree. We just sent money for them to be able to build a structure. This is kind of like the temporary structure.
As they gather in that, as they get some momentum, then they will build other ones.
Next month I will go to Nepal for the first time. Graciela and Antonio Chavez have been there for about 25 years. It’s their 25th anniversary. They are originally from Paraguay.
We’re a connection through our ministers in Paraguay: Angel Hernandez, Kevin, and certainly Walter. They were there. But Nepal is about 5% Christian, and there are radical Hindus that are there. So you can get arrested, you can get put in prison, you can get extradited. If you are found to preach Christ, there are some other kinds of things.
One of the recent things was that there were missionaries in a van from Canada, and they had some other local people, and they were passing out Bibles.
The radical Hindus surrounded the van, asked them to step out. They demanded that the people who’d received the Bibles tear out the pages of the Bibles or they were going to be harmed. There was the threat of that. Then they would give them a match to have them light the pages of the Bible, to burn them, and then say they need to declare that Ram is the Lord.
So anyway, those are some of the things that are taking place. We praise the Lord for the Chavez’s.
These were people as they have shared the gospel. These are people recently, within this last year, who were baptized. And so they’re being baptized in the icy waters of the Himalayans. Of course, Mount Everest ends up being there in Nepal.
So you see the believers there, and this is a church. It’s a prayer meeting for the women that are there. And then, of course, that’s Antonio’s bike, and that’s where he stuffs Bibles. And then he takes them out into communities and out into the country, and he hands out Bibles for Jesus.
So excited to be on hand with them for the first time. And if you are interested in some ministry training courses, we do those by Zoom.
This will be our next one. It ends up being on these Saturdays that are here. I’ll be teaching that class on cross-cultural ministry. It’s basically basic ministry for anybody.
You need to understand the person or the culture that you’re trying to minister to. We often are not only egocentric, we end up being ethnocentric. We think our culture is the standard.
And with that kind of in mind, we are looking for people to measure up. And that’s been the problem with missions, Christian missions. Folks coming from first world nations, they not just preach the gospel, they preach the form of the first world nation.
And the thing is, you go in and folks are disrespecting the people who are in that culture. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know what’s appropriate. And saying, well, you need Jesus, and then it looks like American church, and those things don’t work.
So that’s great training, by the way. If you want to know the times, if you’re interested, it ends up being 07:00 to 10:30. So three and a half hours a day in my time zone, that’d be 09:00 to 12:30.
And so we’ll have people from across the United States, and I think I know Kayla will be part of that for her training. And then, of course, we have this Ignite Ministry Conference. We would invite you to come. This is in Kansas City. Platte City is ten minutes from Kansas City Airport.
And any of these conferences, we’d invite you to come. This has to do with workshops and training and encouragement and connection. It’s not one of. And there’s a cost that ends up being part of that to pay our instructors. But any of these things that would work for you, we invite you to come to.
Of course, the conference that we will have in the first week of March is free. All you do is you have to get your travel and your lodging there, but there’s no cost for that conference.
And that’s what we would call our ministry family reunion. So we invite you to come.
Before I move on, just. I’m going to give just a couple minutes here. About threw myself down a couple minutes. Is there a question about anything that you saw? And then I’m going to move into the message I have for this evening.
Yeah, Kevin, I don’t have a question, but when you’re done with questions, I want to give just an explanation to the church of how specifically this church is involved in the stuff that.
Yeah, please show that’s a good time. Yeah, yeah.
So if you don’t know, this is what we do for missions at the Firehouse Church. We support some missionaries every month, and three of the four of those were represented in those pictures: the Chavezes in Nepal, both the Francas in the Dominican Republic and Hanajus in the Dominican Republic, we support, and then Rob and Lori Mangus in West Africa. So those get a monthly support from the Firehouse Church, Poulsbo, Bremerton.
And then the other thing we do with missions, and there are other missions that aren’t a part of Grace Covenant that he didn’t show. There’s one in Cambodia that we support, a children’s ministry in Cambodia from some missionaries that I knew back from California days. And so that’s every month.
And then also every month, we picked a mission. Just as a leadership team, we pray and we pick a mission to support that month. Usually, it’s somebody that somebody in our church recommends, that we have a relationship with, that somebody knows.
For example, next month in October, Adam Ballstead from the Bremerton church, his brother has just left to go back on the full. He was a full-time missionary, came back to the states, and has just left to go back and to serve in Rwanda.
We usually send about $350 to that person as a one-time gift. And so we do that every month. We’ll send. We got, like, a flavor of the month. And we’ll send that person or that mission, that money. Some of those some. And some of the projects you saw there.
End up being our mission of the month. Kayla Lawmaster, the woman who’s ministering to the deaf. We made her our mission of the month.
We bought some of those bibles that went into West Africa for those conversions. I think we’ve helped with some of those building projects. And so you are a part of that stuff.
And so I just wanted to share that we’re involved in missions. We’re involved in going beyond the local church. And so your giving goes directly to some of those pictures that you just saw up there.
Just wanted to share that with you. Amen.
Once again, I wanted to say thanks for the support. And you can see the differences that are being made from your partnership. Otts, could you catch this light? All right? Perfect.
All right, I want to bring this message to you this evening. The voice of the Good Shepherd. The voice of the Good Shepherd. And you can turn to John 10. So we’re gonna deal with the first 18 verses this evening from John 10. I wanna start reading with verses one through six for this message entitled, “The Voice of the Good Shepherd.”
1 “I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber! 2 But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. 5 They won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t know his voice.” (John 10:1–5, NLT)
Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
There was a common practice in the day, and that is regarding shepherding. Sheep was a business. There are places in the world today where there’s a similar kind of culture, if you will. Shepherding culture. Nomads, Bedouins, roam the land with their flocks, and there’s a lot of open range. So shepherds would lead their sheep to pasture.
They would spread out over the countryside to graze. The shepherd would call them together and lead them to get water, would draw the flock together into a tight circle at night. And if a predator came to attack the sheep, the shepherd would defend the sheep and drive away the predator. So the shepherd led the sheep from pasture to pasture, made sure that they had water, made sure that they were well fed, cared for, and protected. This was the life of the shepherd and the sheep.
So the sheep got very acquainted with their Shepherd’s voice and counted on his care. When the shepherd needed supplies or had some reason to go into town, he drove the flock to a common corral. The gatekeeper would let his flock in, and his flock would come in and mingle with the other sheep that were in the common corral.
So when the shepherd’s business was done in town, he went to the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper recognized him. He opened the gate, and the shepherd called to his sheep.
And the sheep then would hear the Shepherd’s voice. And they came to him, and he led them out of the pen.
It was a real-life analogy that Jesus is giving to his hearers. And note verses 3 and 4 again. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him. The sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he’s brought them all out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. (John 10:3-4, NLT)
Now, when I grew up, we grew up on about, I don’t know, three acres or so. And there were other neighbors that had about that kind of property.
I grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri. That’s the home of the Pony Express. It’s the beginning of the Pony Express and the end of Jesse James. So that’s kind of its claim to fame.
But so anyway, in the summer, I just played baseball. We loved baseball. I had the neighbors over all the time. We were playing baseball.
So this friend of mine who lived behind me named Steve, he would come over and play baseball. We’d be playing baseball, and he’d be ready to pitch me the ball. And all of a sudden he says, I’ve got to go home.
And I go, what do you mean, you got to go home? He goes, yeah, my dad’s calling for me. I’ve got to go home. I said, I didn’t hear anybody call. But his dad would sit on the back stoop of his house that faced the back of our property.
And he whistled, and he had this incredibly loud whistle. I didn’t hear the whistle. I mean, the distance there, two to three blocks. But Steve could hear the whistle. He knew the call of his father. You know, the sheep knew the shepherd, and the shepherd knew his sheep.
And get this, he calls them each by name. Anybody here ever dealt with sheep? Had sheep, had a flock of sheep, known people who had flocks of sheep? I don’t know about.
I don’t know about you, but all sheep look the same to me, but not to the good shepherd. You are intricately made.
This is the depth of relationship that the shepherd has with the sheep, where you are intimately known. You have a name, and he knows your name.
You know, our name is very personal. And if you want to begin a relationship with other people, ask them their name. It values that person. Learn their name, call them by their name.
You see, their name identifies the person, and a name is very personal. So you are deeply and personally loved by the good shepherd. Names are totally important to God. Look at all the names that are there in the Scriptures. It’s amazing the number of times that he calls people by name.
Here’s this one, Abraham. And he calls people by name. I mean, this is the most high God. And names are important to God because he says, and he shall be called Emmanuel, God with us. And he shall be called wonderful counselor. He shall be called prince of peace, everlasting father, mighty God.
So the names provide descriptions. Jehovah Rapha. Jehovah Nisi. Jehovah Jireh. The names are incredibly important. And do you know that God knows your name?
Psalm 147:4 says this. God determines the number of stars, and he calls them each by name.
4 He counts the stars and calls them all by name. (Psalm 147:4, NLT)
Now, think about that for a minute. Let’s break this down. In the Milky Way galaxy, in which the earth and the solar system are a small part, it’s estimated that there are 100 billion stars. Furthermore, scientists estimate that there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe.
So if you figure a hundred billion stars as a galaxy average and multiply that times 2 trillion galaxies, you come up with a mind-blowing, crazy number: 200 billion trillion stars.
The God of heaven is a mind-blowing God. I can’t get my head around the immensity of this universe that He created, and He spoke it into existence. 200 billion trillion stars. But don’t miss this. He calls them each by name, each star intricately and uniquely created and personally known by the Father.
Now, there’s just a measly 8 billion people on this planet. So I just want to let you know you’re not lost in the numbers. Jesus knows you by name. The question is, do you know him? Have you heeded his call to accept him as savior and follow him as your shepherd?
And by the way, regarding names, you may want to turn to Revelation 2:17. I think I’ll have it up here on the screen. Jesus says this to the church at Pergamum through the apostle John, who is to deliver that to the messenger of the church.
And he says this, he says, to the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.
Pergamum was a capital city. It was where the governor’s residence was. And so in Roman custom, when the governor had a banquet, he would send out an invitation to the people he wanted to invite to the banquet.
Now, also, interestingly, in that area, they were known for their white marble. And so often then, that invitation would actually be a name that would be inscribed on a piece of white marble and delivered then to the person. That was the invitation then to the governor’s banquet.
So, Jesus using this cultural practice of invitation, the white stone for every believer is an invitation to the banquet. What’s the banquet? The wedding supper, the lamb.
But what about that new name written on the white stone known only to the one who receives it? One Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, describes it like this.
He says it’s evidence of sonship and daughterhood. There’s another implication here in Scripture. When you got a new name, it was a mark of a new status.
For instance, when the Lord called Abraham to be the father of many nations, He changed his name, gave him a new name. It was Abram, father. Abraham, father of many nations. Same thing for his wife. You are going to be the mother, Sarai, and become Sarah, the mother of many nations.
And then, of course, there was Jacob, who wrestled with the angel of the Lord all night and said, I want you to bless me. And he prevailed, if you will. And the Lord gave him a new name, and it was Israel. Because you have wrestled, you have contended, you have persevered with God.
So a new name indicates a new status. you’re not unknown to the Lord. you’re not overlooked, insignificant, forgotten, lost in the population of the world. No. The good shepherd knows your name. He calls you by name.
Have you heard the voice of the Good Shepherd? Have you accepted his invitation for him to be your Savior?
So when you accept his forgiveness, you invite him into your heart. You become the sheep of his flock. You become a follower, and he protects you from evil. He leads you into everything that is good. You begin listening to his voice. He positions you under his favors to enjoy life to the full. And as you faithfully follow him throughout your life, you will be victorious.
And guess what? You have a guaranteed reservation in heaven. And you will be presented with a white stone. And inscribed on that white stone is your new name. Because you have a new status, you will have an eternal place in the new heaven and the new earth with your new name. Almost like a birth certificate. A new birth certificate.
Are you ever listening for and guided by the Shepherd’s voice? Verse four. His sheep follow him because they know his voice.
Well, I have a confession to make to you. I hear voices. I know what you’re saying, Pastor Kevin.
Why did you allow the schizoid behind the pulpit? Well, whether we want to admit it or not, we all hear voices. The question is, can you distinguish between the voices?
So what are the voices that we heard of, and whose voice are you following? Well, there’s the voice of others. There’s the voice of family. There are voices of workers. There are voices of neighbors. There are voices of politicians. There are all kinds of voices of others.
I can still hear my mother’s voice. Dallas, leave your sister alone. Dallas, get out of the flowers. She loved her flowers. It just seemed so often that that baseball would roll into the flowers and you’d have to go get it. Baseball’s more important than flowers. Not to mom.
And then there’s the voice of me. I have a will. I have a voice. Do you ever talk to yourself? Someone said, yes, I talk to myself when I need expert advice. Spoiler alert. You may not be the expert you think you are. You may be fooling yourself. You may just be wise in your own eyes.
So let me give you a Dr. Phil-ism. How’s that working for you?
And then there’s the voice of the devil, the tempter, the accuser, the deceiver, the slanderer, the father of lies. He will tell you God doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know you exist. He’s distant and disinterested in your puny, pathetic life. He doesn’t see you. He’s not mindful of you. He doesn’t love you. He has no kind of plan for you. You are a piece of random matter, a meaningless particle on the earth’s crust.
And then there’s the voice of God. The voice of God comes through his word and his spirit, speaking to your heart. God does love you. He has good for you. He will counsel and guide you into abundant life and into the promise of eternal life with him.
So who’s dominating the conversation of your life? Who’s leading the discussion? Who’s winning the debate? Whose voice of counsel and advice are you following?
It’s interesting. Verse six says that his sheep hear his voice. But it says in John 10:6 that the Pharisees and the Spiritual leaders didn’t understand what he was saying.
My sheep hear my voice. And let’s look at John 10, or, excuse me, John 7:13. As we work our way through this passage of the good shepherd.
Therefore, Jesus said again. Verse 7. Therefore, Jesus said again. Truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved.
7 …”I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me were thieves and robbers. But the true sheep did not listen to them. 9 Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures. (John 10:7-9, NLT)
10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. 11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep. 12 A hired hand will run when he sees a wolf coming. He will abandon the sheep because they don’t belong to him and he isn’t their shepherd. And so the wolf attacks them and scatters the flock. (John 10:10-12, NLT)
The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. When the wolf attacks the flock and then scatters it, the man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
Jesus further identifies and illustrates himself as the good shepherd. He has genuine love for the sheep.
And Jesus uses actually another illustration. He talks about how the shepherd would lead the sheep, and if they were out in the open range, try to find some kind of enclosure, natural enclosure, and then lead them into a pen that wouldn’t necessarily have a gate but would have some kind of gathering that was there.
Then the shepherd would lay down at night across the entrance into that area and lie there with the staff, and he would then ultimately become the gate, if you will. The sheep were safely contained. They couldn’t wander away.
They were secure from intruders. So Jesus, drawing on that analogy, says, I am the gate for the sheep. Before me, there were a lot of imposters. They were thieves and robbers. They had their own selfish agendas and evil intentions for the people. But my sheep don’t listen to them. My sheep don’t listen to them.
And then he makes this reference, John 10:9-10.
9 Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures. 10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. (John 10:9-10, NLT)
Jesus is the only way of salvation. And let me say this. If you haven’t received Jesus as your Savior and asked him to forgive you and invited him to come into your life, and you are offering yourself for that relationship, that you would be a follower of Jesus, this is absolutely the most important decision that you will ever make in your life.
There’s no other decision, no other life choice that would be greater than this choice. We have 70 plus or minus years in this life. And within the span of our life, we’re going to choose where we’re going to spend all of eternity. It’ll either be in heaven or it won’t be.
He is the only way to have a full, favored, purposeful, meaningful, fruitful, and eternal life. The thief is the devil who led a rebellion against God’s precious and pristine creation by seducing Adam and Eve into sin in the garden of Eden.
I’m talking about Lucifer. This once glorious, beautiful angel of God left the presence of the Lord, sought the worship of mankind for himself. Satan then becomes the personification of evil through the sin of man and brought all the successive generations under his reign of evil and dominion, chaos and wickedness unleashed on the world.
But God, can you say with me? But God sent his son Jesus into the world to redeem the sheep from the thief. The thief delights in bondage, destruction, and death. And he has an agenda for you.
He wants to steal everything from your life that’s good, godly, and meaningful to you. He wants to steal your peace. He wants to stir up continual conflict. He wants to rob you of your health, your joy, your future, and your hope.
He’s a sinister foe. He wants to kill your dreams, stifle your life. He wants to divert you from God, His love, and what’s truly life. Indeed, his aim is to capture your attention.
Have you listened to his lies, direct you by his voice, feed you false information, and lead you into death and destruction both physically and eternally?
Hear the words of Jesus. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd. And the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Jesus came and took our sins, our deeds, and darkness upon himself. On the cross, he shed his blood to cover and cleanse us of our sin and our shame.
He gave his life as payment for our sin. The old song I owe to debt I couldn’t pay. He paid a debt he didn’t owe. He’s the good shepherd. He laid down his life for you, that we may have life and have it to the full.
We need to know what true and good shepherds really look like, you know? Throughout this passage, Jesus identifies these impostors. The church in kingdom ministry. We need to examine our motivations in serving and discerning the intention of those who want to express their gifts.
In leadership, Jesus contrasts the characteristics of the impostors and the tactics of the enemy next to the Good Shepherd and the security of the flock.
So here are a few of the impostors: the thief and the robber. You know, those who have desires and designs upon the sheep for selfish gain. They want to take them as a possession, use them for their purpose. The sheep are just assets to serve their vision and purpose of selfish gain.
So I was a church planter, and about two years in, as a young pastor planting a church, there was a young man who then came to our church along with his wife. They were going; they had a call of God on them. They were going to seminary.
And so we invited them in, and they began to serve. They certainly had gifts, and people responded to them. And so we were working together until we came to this crossroad. He had a vision to want to go this way.
And that wasn’t where the Lord was leading me, and he had called me to be the shepherd. So you know what two visions are? That’s division. And so that’s where we stood.
And so I came to the young couple and said, listen, it’s clear that you’re gifted. I would say you probably have a call of God on your life, but we’re not headed your direction and you’re not helping our church with you wanting to insert your agenda. And so I said, it would be best if you go and find what your ministry is.
Allow God to find that. Let him bring his flock then to you.
So they didn’t care to hear that. But at the same time, I was insistent that this wasn’t working. And so then they left the church. And when they did, they took about six families. They went to another place in town and started going to that church.
And in that church, then they were there about three months. And when they left that church, they took about 70 people.
When they took that group, they started meeting in a public space there in the city and began to have their church.
And then after three months, the young man suddenly announced to the people, oh, God has called me to be a chaplain in the military. And he left all of those sheep then high and dry. It never was about the sheep.
Certainly that is the Spirit of the principal thief, the devil, who comes to steal and kill and destroy. The thief doesn’t have your best interest in mind, but the good shepherd does.
And then there’s the wolf. Yeah, the wolf comes to attack the flock, devours, causes them harm, incites fear, creates division, scatters the flock.
There are people who get used as pawns of the enemy to do damage in the church. your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8, NLT)
Be mindful of the ministry’s tactics in your life. He wants to separate you from the flock. He wants to chase you around, weaken you, isolate you, and beat you down in your isolation and spiritual depletion.
You’re going to put up little resistance, and you’re no threat to his kingdom. You need to be in continual counsel and care under the good shepherd. And you need the flock. You need to find your place in the flock. You need to be consistent in your attending in the flock, receiving in the flock, serving in the flock.
And then there’s the hireling, the hired hand. For the hireling, serving in the church, working with the sheep is just a job. You may get some compensation, may or may not be money.
You get a title, you get recognition, you get some satisfaction of serving others with your gifts. But then comes the Spiritual attack. And when that happens, the hireling cuts and runs. The man runs. Verse 13. The man runs because he’s a hired hand, cares nothing for the sheep.
So trials in life, ministry, and your kingdom service will test your mettle and your motives. They will qualify your commitment and calling when conflict comes. The hireling runs because their serving was always more about them than it was the sheep.
So let me close this message this evening with three conclusions from this passage.
You know the good shepherd is wholeheartedly called and committed to the sheep. We want to finish with this passage here. John 10:14.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, 15 just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep. (John 10:14-15, NLT)
16 I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd. 17“The Father loves me because I sacrifice my life so I may take it back again. 18 No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded.” (John 10:16-18, NLT)
So Jesus said in his ministry, I have been called to the lost sheep of Israel. That’s the sheep of the pen that he’s speaking to at this juncture. That was his mission.
Didn’t mean that others were excluded, and there are certainly exceptions to that that we can read, but that was his primary mission.
But he also says, I’ve got sheep from another pen and I need to bring them in also. That’s everyone else in the world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Jesus is the savior of the world. He is the good shepherd. For every person.
The good shepherd is invested in the relationship with his sheep. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. He knows your name.
You have an open invitation into his presence to live under his guidance and loving care.
Secondly, second conclusion, the sheep, my sheep hear my voice. Jesus wants to communicate with you. He wants to listen to your questions and your concerns. He wants to speak affirmation to you, give you guidance for the situations of your life and how you are to serve him.
And then don’t miss this third one. Those who serve me will help gather my sheep, care for my sheep, and serve to benefit my sheep and my father’s will.
I want to turn this over to Pastor Kevin.
Our Good Shepherd invites you now because he’s a provider to his table. And so Jesus wants to feed us with his own life.
Dallas said that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread of the Passover and he said this is my body which is given for you.
After supper, he gave thanks to you, Father.
He poured out the wine, the cup of blessing, and he said, this is my blood which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. It’s the blood of the new covenant.
You have one Good Shepherd. You have one Lord, one God. He knows your name, and he personally invites you to come and share this meal, this pre-meal to the wedding feast.
And he wants you to remember that you are loved, you are forgiven, you are made new, and you are a follower of King Jesus.
So, dear ones, come and take our family meal. You were invited to his table by his invitation. Be thankful.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
