(John - Part 40): The True Shepherd vs. the Hireling — A.W. Tozer

The Thief, the Hireling, and the Good Shepherd

In the 10th chapter of John, verses 10 to 16, the thief cometh not but to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep, but he that is an hireling and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, he seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep.

The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

And other sheep I have which are not this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Now, this is, you might be surprised to hear me say, a difficult chapter to preach from.

The reason is not what one might suppose. It is not to find truth here, but to make a selection of truth at any given time. Because of the excessive plenitude of truth in this chapter, every verse, every phrase, almost every major word is a text.

We feel that we are walking in molten gold, that we are in a diamond mine, with diamonds jutting out everywhere to be picked up basketfuls of diamonds. So tonight, I've almost arbitrarily arranged it like this, to talk about the thief and the hireling and the wolf and the other sheep and the imperative of finding them in the time when there shall be only one fold and one shepherd.

The Thief as a Religious Racketeer

Now, verse 10 is not a pleasant verse, not at all a pleasant verse. The thief, he says, cometh not but to steal and to kill and to destroy. So there we have a picture of the thief. He sneaks into the fold, and his purpose in coming in is to steal sheep and to kill some sheep, because he wants to eat, and wantonly to destroy the flock.

That is, the destroying is not apart from the stealing and killing. The stealing and the killing is the destroying of the flock. This thief is an enemy to the sheep, and he is also an enemy to the true shepherd whose sheep they are.

Now, that's a solemn, if beautiful, or beautiful if solemn truth. If we simply leave it there, unconnected with any modern situation. But we don't dare do that, because this truth is for us today as well as for them back there.

And the simple truth is here that we have pictured the religious racketeer, the person who comes in under the guise of religion, and who is not there to help the sheep but to fleece the sheep, and to steal from the sheep, and of course to kill, only that he might eat the sheep.

It's not wanton killing, it is killing for the sake of the food. So this thief is in there to get what he can for himself from the sheep. He is the slick confidence man of the kingdom. He can smile, pray, quote a text, and be a villain still.

Now, they don't hesitate, these religious racketeers, which our Lord tells us about. Now, this is not I introducing it. I'm finding it here. They don't hesitate to use sacred things. I have some respect for the highwayman who goes out at the risk of his own skin and holds up a man on the highway and takes his money.

I certainly have some respect for him. He's putting his own life in jeopardy, because it has been known that the highwayman with his gun was not fast enough, and the other man shoots first. So many a highwayman has lost his life.

It's dangerous. Robbery is dangerous. And for a man to go out and rob like the traditional robber and take the risk of having his own brains beaten up, at least you can say, well, he's a bold man. But this thief is not a bold man, because he does not put himself in any jeopardy at all.

He uses religion as his disguise. And under the cloak of religion, he becomes a racketeer. And seeing that he's a cynical, bad man, deeply depraved, he doesn't hesitate to use any sacred thing. For instance, healing of the body.

He will take healing of the body and make a racket out of it. And they are doing it, and have done it, and are doing it. There are healing men who hire people to come and pretend they're sick, and they pray for them, and they get up and praise the Lord.

That's well known. I've got that documented. That's a fact. That's known, that they hire people. I have hired people, and otherwise persuaded them, to lie down and pretend they're sick. A man who was healed after eight priests had given him up, eight priests had given him up, he was instantaneously healed with the touch of Jesus Christ.

So necessarily, he believes in divine healing. He went to a healing campaign where one of these men was operating. A little boy, six years old, was prayed for. He was blind. He couldn't see, of course, being blind.

And when they were through praying, the evangelist says, Now can you see? And he said, Yes. And he followed the evangelist around over the platform to prove that he was healed and could see. And my friend, who had been healed after eight priests, had given him an extreme unction and given him up as dead.

And he was converted and became an Alliant preacher now. But he went up to the little boy and he said, Sonny, are you, were you blind? He said, No, sir. He said, Were you ever blind? He said, No, sir.

He said, I'm in school. He went to the mother and said, Is that your child? She said, Yes, that's my child. He said, Mother, was that boy ever blind? She said, No, sir. He was never blind. It was a racket they were running, and of course the crowd went into hysterics and praised the Lord and wept and clapped their hands and went on big.

But this thief was in there to get the money of the people and to steal a reputation at their expense and to live off the most sacred emotions of the human breast and to fatten himself on the woes of mankind.

That man is a thief, and whoever operates like that is a thief, and he is thoroughly bad. He's depraved more deeper, more deeply than a highwayman. And the man who holds up this store and robs it is a gentleman because he's putting his life in danger.

A policeman may see him come out and put a bullet through him, but nobody's there to put a bullet through this racketeer who is paying people to say they're blind when they're not. He's a thoroughly depraved liar and child of sin, and yet he can smile and pray and quote a text and pretend to be deeply in love with the poor, sick world.

Then missions are also used as a racket. I think that the healing of the human body, salvation of the human soul, and the work of divine missions, foreign missions, those are so sacred we ought to speak of them only in hushed voice.

And yet there are those who can, with open eyes, cynical souls of the kingdom, they can enter and use foreign missions as a means of getting popularity and making money and lots of it. And there are those who have learned that if you touch the tender cord of foreign missions, that God's good, innocent, generous people will shell out of their money largely.

And so they have it arranged so that they can get to the money of the people and can have a good cut out of it and can live well and drive big cars at the expense of God's simple-hearted, honest people who gladly and joyfully give of their money because they think they're giving it to a good cause.

Some one fellow is claiming that he's broadcasting behind the Iron Curtain. Somebody told me in Virginia he said it's a well-known and provable fact that all he has is a half-hour radio program once a week.

But over in this country the big ads indicate that he's doing a tremendous job over there. Now, it is the business of the shepherd to warn against that kind of thing and to warn God's people against it.

And some people don't like to hear it and they'll be mad, and some won't come back here and they'll say that man poses a scoundrel because he dares to talk about healing and missions and things like that in such a bold and terrible way.

Well, I read in the book of Ezekiel where God says they feed themselves and don't feed the flock, and they rob and they kill and they get fat on the flock, and God says, I'll fix them. And I'll send true shepherds out that'll round up my flock and bless them.

And we also have men who live off our love for our dead. The love we have for our very dead is used sometimes by these false shepherds, these thieves. And money is taken and popularity is received. Now, that's the thief.

And if you think for a minute that Christian charity would pull a veil down over that thing, you don't know what Christian charity is. When a man is honest and fair and bold and tries to tell the truth, there's always some tender-minded and simple-minded saint that's ready to run up to him and say, Now, wait a minute, let charity cover a multitude of sins.

If any of these thieves would repent, I'd be one of the first ones to shake their hand and say, All right, bud, I'll pray for you now. Go start straight and try to give that money back and live like a man from now on.

And I'd be one of the first ones to help him. But love cannot cover a thief when a thief is battening and getting himself a wad of money in the holy precincts of the sanctuary. And then, verses 12 and 13, we come to another fellow, not as bad as the thief.

The Hireling Who Abandons the Sheep

He's the hireling. There's almost a streak of humor here, and there's a kind of a sardonic humor underneath this one. He says in 12 and 13 that the hireling, who is not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, he sees the wolf coming.

And of course, he ducks out. He leaveth the sheep and fleeth. And the wolf catches them and scatters the sheep. And the hireling flees just because he is a hireling, and he doesn't care for the sheep.

Now, who is the hireling? Well, he certainly is not as depraved as the thief because he doesn't come into the sanctuary and pretend to be anything. He doesn't deceive. He's not a racketeer. He's just a hired man.

One of the commentaries says that this word here, the only word we have in English for a hireling properly, is the tramp laborer. The fellow who loafs around, floats around, gets a job, works for a few months, and gets himself a little wild, and then goes his way, spends it, and then when he needs another little bit of money, gets another job.

And so here's your hireling. Now, he doesn't deliberately destroy, and he isn't a thief, and he does do an honest day's job, but he's not a shepherd. He only works for the shepherd. He's a hired man. He doesn't owe him anything.

He just works there. And he has no love for the great shepherd. He has no interest in the sheep. And he does what he does for a living. Now, there's your Christian leader who is simply doing what he does because he knows that it pays him, and it's a rather easy living.

Now, I like that word living I've used there because, did you know that in ecclesiastical history, you can find it, you don't have to go way back, you can find in recent ecclesiastical history that the word living is used of a pastor.

A young fellow comes out of the seminary and gets his degree, and his bishop says to him, Well, now, young man, I think I can find a living for you. So he gets him a church, and he calls that his living.

Can you imagine that? Now, I, for my part, I can't imagine it. I realize that the ox that treads out the corn has to be fed, or you won't have any ox very long. I realize that he's worthy of being fed.

I realize the old priests of Israel used to live off of the tithe of the other twelve, the other eleven tribes. I realize that our Lord himself was fed by the generosity of the people to whom he ministered.

And Paul said that was all right. And I realize that, that's part of the order of God, that those who give full time to the Christian work should be supported by those who cannot give full time to it, but are perfectly willing to share in the support of those who do give full time.

The missionary that goes to the field can't also labor and have a job. He has to be free, so he'll be turning loose and paying. That's perfectly all right. But there's a different approach to it, you see, my brethren.

Take such a man, say, as R .S. Roseberry, who has spent his lifetime in Africa and has put the whole continent in debt to him. He's had to live on what the people sent him, of course. He couldn't have a job in an office or a factory.

He's had to live off the generosity of the people. But the idea that mission work was a living for him would be so shocking to him, I think he'd drop dead if anybody even suggested it. And so any other man who is an honest man, who is an under-shepherd, and who loves the shepherd, his embarrassment will be that he has to take anything.

He won't accept his work, his spiritual work, as a living, as a way to get along. He will accept it as a joy, a privilege, and then rather embarrassingly say, well, I suppose I'll have to take a salary.

I can't work in a factory and do my work for the Lord. But whatever you say, I'm not laying any law down and asking for anything. I don't want any raise. I just want whatever you want me to have. It's all right.

It's the only way the man who loves the sheep and loves the shepherd can ever serve God. But as soon as he makes a living out of it, he's a scoundrel. And just as soon as he becomes a hired man, a cramped laborer, oh, what sardonic humor there is there.

These cramped laborers, and you know we've got a lot of these fellows traveling around putting on one-night stands. They start in California and go to Maine, or else better, they start in Minnesota and go to Florida.

And I notice that they don't start in Minnesota in May, they start in November. And they're called to the Lord down where it's warm. And we've got so many of them. We had a church in Southern California that was without a pastor.

And the home secretary said he got 14 applications from brethren who felt instantly called to the Lord to go to California, where the mockingbird singeth all the day long and the skies are always blue.

And it's very lovely and nice. And people want to have fun, and so they start. And they write ahead and I get the letters. I'd like to be at your place Wednesday night for thus and thus, because I'm on my way to this and that.

And they're having, why don't they bum their way instead of bumming their way on the churches? Better bum than bum, I would say, wouldn't you? And yet these hired cramps who come in and put on one-night stands, and the sheep get down on their knees and let them hear them.

Don't cheer them all over. They just take off a little chunk. But by the time they've reached Florida, they have quite a bag of wool. And they can live down there till the mockingbird nests and the sun hath returned to the north.

Well, the harling and the thief, God help us preachers. We walk between the nether and the upper millstone, to mix up a figure, and we can become rascals without anybody finding it out. Pray for us, brethren.

Pray that we'll be holy and clean and sacrificial and good and right and humble, because there are more temptations for a minister. It's easy to fool the public. I can stand up here and fool you people, and you will think I'm a saint and I can be a devil underneath.

And you are saying this in good heart that you won't find it out for five years. Pray for the ministers of the gospel. Pray for the leaders. Pray for the missionary promoters. Pray for those who promote the work of God, that they won't degenerate into thieves and harlings and use the church of God as a way to make money.

The Wolf and the Need for Faithful Shepherds

Well, then there's the wolf. And I think I ought to say, I want you to hear me say, that there are a wonderful bunch of good, godly, honest fellows. I meet them wherever I go. Good, honest men that would die for Christ at the drop of a hat, that would serve him.

One man, a nephew of mine by marriage, told me about Hyman Appelman. Why, he said, you know, Uncle, Hyman Appelman, he's a song leader, he said, that Dr. Appelman prays long hours and prays and lies and prays and calls on God long hours.

He closes on Sunday one place and opens on Monday another place and never takes a vacation and continues to drive on. And I said, tell Dr. Appelman he'll kill himself. He'd better quit it. And the fellow said, he's been doing it for 25 years.

I said, my objection is overruled. A man can do it 25 years, can suffer like that and pray like that and labor like that. He's got my respect. There are a lot of good men. And I'm even prepared to say that the majority are.

But God warns against the thief and the hireling. Look out for the hired tramp who's only working for the shepherd and who hasn't any interest in the flock nor any interest in the shepherd. Then there's the wolf, verse 12.

Satan is that wolf, of course. And the thief and the hireling are enemies of the sheep and they're friends of the wolf. Because after the thief or the hireling has gotten in and scattered the sheep, the wolf finds it very easy to go in and get himself a nice meal of mutton.

As long as the sheep are gathered around their shepherd, sure of themselves, poised and careful, they're safe. But as soon as they go wild and start to bleat and run all directions, all the wolf has to do is just wait till one passes him and pounce and he's got it.

So there's the wolf. And now this hired man sees a wolf. And again, I find a certain amount of dark complexion humor here. He says that the hireling sees the wolf coming. And he says to himself, now I'm working here, but I don't see why I should take any risk with the fangs of a wolf.

So he just disappears. He hears the sheep bleating and he looks back over his scared shoulder and sees them down and being torn, sees the blood flow. But he doesn't care. He's just working for the shepherd.

They're not his sheep and he isn't attached to them and they don't know his voice and he doesn't know their name. He never patted their heads. He never held them in his arms when they were lambs and he never mended their legs when they were broken.

He just works for a while for the shepherd. So he doesn't care what happens to the sheep. He just doesn't want to get torn by the fangs of the wolf. So the last picture we have of the hireling is that he's got his hat in his hand to make good time.

He's getting out of that region immediately. He may not even come back for his pay. Though the chances are knowing him, he'll likely be around Monday morning for his pay. And then Trampone someplace else.

Now isn't that a ghastly, terrible description? I didn't make that description. Jesus did. He put it here. And ecclesiastical history is replete with that kind of thing. Why? Because it's a fallen world and we're bad people and we need God.

That's why. It's what might be expected in a bad world like this. The next point, the good shepherd. I'm the good shepherd. He'd come all the way down and been incarnated that he might be a good shepherd.

Jesus as the Selfless Good Shepherd

And he didn't care for himself at all. You notice that he never performed a miracle for himself, never one. His miracles were always for somebody else. He never asked anybody for anything for himself except that woman when he said, Will you give me a glass of water?

And I'm not sure that he didn't ask for water in order to get her into conversation or he might win her to himself, which he did. He never asked for anything. A selfless man, a man who doesn't ask for anything, but who lives for the sheep and finally dies for the sheep.

He cares for the sheep, this good shepherd. He was there when they were born and he picked up the little old scrambled lamb, all tail and legs and appetite and started it off right and taught it its first little how to get its meal.

And if it got in trouble, he found it and he taught it his voice and he carried it when it got lost on his shoulder. He loved the sheep and he was the good shepherd. What a contrast. Thieves and howlings and wolves and then standing over against it is the great good shepherd of the sheep.

How we ought to love the Lord Jesus. How precious he ought to be to us. This shepherd that proved that he loved us even unto death. And what can you do more for anybody than to die for them? You can help them all well and good, but maybe not at your own inconvenience.

You can give them a good deal, but maybe not at your own loss. You can sacrifice something for them, but you will still have something left. But when you give your life for them, you don't have anything left.

So when Jesus, our Lord, gave his life for his flock, he didn't have anything left. There was the good shepherd. How we ought to sing about that shepherd. This is my favorite picture of Jesus, that of the shepherd.

He has many, many names and he appears under many, many figures and metaphors. But that of a shepherd is the sweetest of them all. This good shepherd who found the lambs. And there isn't a Christian here tonight, but the good shepherd didn't find you.

Lost and undone, he found you, he found you. Here's the good shepherd. Now I notice again another point, the other sheep, verse 16. Other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Now he has other sheep beside Israel he met.

The Other Sheep Beyond Israel

Now Israel, even Peter, found this very hard. You see, they had gotten the idea that they were the favorite of the Lord. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and Daniel and all the rest. Their Bible and their language and their temple and their city and their priests and their rituals.

They had come pretty much to depend upon themselves as being the very favorite of God. And yet here was this good shepherd saying, I have other sheep that are not of this fold and I know how they looked at each other.

Other sheep not of this fold? We are not we Israelites? Is not he the king of Israel? Are we not of the seed of Abraham? What does he mean, other sheep? And they had a hard time believing that Jesus meant that there were any other sheep beside Israel.

And even Peter, when he was full of the Holy Ghost, didn't believe it. That is, he couldn't grasp it. He wasn't doubting it, but he just didn't grasp it. So one day when it was time for prayer and he was morally able to receive it, the Lord let down a great big sheep.

One of these parachutes, you drop out of an airplane, what do you call those things? Parachute in reverse, upside down, in it. In it there were all sorts of unclean beasts. There would be an anteater and an elephant and a pig.

And a lot of things that they weren't supposed to eat in Israel, they were unclean. And Jesus said, Peter, get up and eat. And Peter, even after Pentecost, he talked back to God. He said, Lord, excuse me, but there's a mistake here.

I'm a Jew and I have never eaten anything unclean. He said, look at these lips. He said, nothing that wasn't kosher ever passed these lips. And the Lord said, Peter, when I call it clean, don't you call it unclean.

Now get to the Gentiles. Off Peter went and opened the door to the Gentiles, opened the door to the Samaritans. And Peter learned that the Lord had come for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. There were other sheep that were not of that fold.

Now we find it just as hard as Peter found it. And of course in our Christian missionary alliance, we're taught from our childhood up that the Lord has other sheep. But there are some churches where as soon as you talk about other sheep, they say, why don't you deal with the heathen at home?

And then, of course, they never do anything about it. Theoretically, we believe in the other sheep, but practically we tend to forget the other sheep. I hope this church will never forget the other sheep, that there are other sheep that are not of our fold.

Oh, there are a lot of applications here. There are sheep that are not of our alliance fold. I believe that. I believe that there are Christians that are not alliance people. Those Jews, doesn't matter.

See, I believe it. There are other sheep that are not of this fold. Thank God. You know, they don't like to have me talk like this because it's hard on the morale of our society. But morale will stagger along somehow.

We love God's other sheep. All of God's other sheep. The Nazarene sheep, and the Pentecostal sheep, and the Baptist sheep. Wept as they are, they're God's dear sheep. The Presbyterian sheep, educated sheep, and the Episcopal sheep, the very high-brow sheep.

But as long as they're the Lord's sheep, they're mine. They belong to me, and I belong to them. And I belong to all the churches there are. Every church is my church. And they can throw me out if they will, but I still belong to the fold.

Other sheep that are not of this fold. I want you to get broad-minded. I got a hat here the other day. And first thing I did, I got something on it, tried to clean it, and it was no good. So I took it down to somebody down here supposed to clean hats.

And I got it back in a few days, shrunk, until I'd have had to go to Borneo to have my head shrunk to fit it. So I took it back to the man I'd bought it from, and I said, Mr. Balleen, I had this hat cleaned, and look at it.

It just sat up on there like a comic character in a show. And well, he said, you'll have to leave that here. He said, if you'll leave it with me, I'll dance in the leather band, and then I'll put it down on this thing, and showed me the stretcher.

One of those affairs in two halves, and with a screw, and you put the hat on, and then you turn the screw, and every hour or so you come give it a little turn so it won't break or tear. Keep turning it, keep turning it, and finally it gets as big as your head.

But that's the stretcher. Oh, how I'd like to see all of you people stretch until your hearts dig inside. Be also enlarged, says the Holy Ghost. And Augustine said, narrow is the mansion of my soul, O God, enlarge thou it.

Alan Redpath preaching down the loop. Somebody said to me, what do you make of Brother Redpath getting mixed up in all that gang? I said, listen, I'd preach in a Jewish synagogue if they'd invite me. I'd preach down there if they hadn't invited me, but I'd preach down there.

I'd go to a Christian science temple, anywhere and preach the word of God. I'd say, let me preach what I want to preach. Paul would go in place of blaming Redpath, I think he's doing a fine job. Let him preach down there.

If you don't like what he preaches, kick him out and you'll be happy. But this little narrowness, is he an Alliance man? I don't know whether he's an Alliance man or not. The Alliance is only 70 years old, and Christianity goes back to the Pentecost.

What's the difference whether he's an Alliance man or not? The word of God tells us that God has other sheep, other sheep. And they're lovely sheep, and they're his sheep. And they don't belong to this fold, and he's bringing them in.

And there'll be a day when they'll all be one fold. But now, they're all scattered around. And then there are the lost sheep of the foreign lands. I was in a meeting last night. We were sending a Greek over to Greece to preach the word over there.

Chris Pappas, if you ever heard Chris Pappas, you heard somebody. Just put the needle down off, Chris, go. And preaches the word. He's the busiest man I know. I said Chris was jet-propelled. And I'm only a propeller job and can't keep up with the power.

But away he goes, just like a jet-propelled Greek. And he's going over there to preach the gospel. Now, I believe in that. And I believe that there are other sheep that don't belong to this fold, sheep that haven't a white skin, and sheep that haven't eyes quite the direction our eyes go.

You think that when the Lord died, he only died for blondes? Or that he only died for pinkish-brownish people like most of us? We call ourselves white men. There isn't a white man here tonight, not one.

There isn't a white woman here tonight. We're all spotted and freckled and funny-looking, aren't we now? Look at yourselves, sister, and praise God for grace to stand a shot. If you think you're a white woman, you're mistaken, you're not.

When you die, you'll be white. But as long as there's blood in your veins, you won't be white. You'll be a sort of a very red, very mild, very light. And we, God, you think the Lord looked at the skin of the man he was dying for?

No, he looked at his heart. You think he looked which way his eyes went? Oriental's eyes slope this way, and ours go straight across. Who's to say which is the better-looking? You're just used to yourself, that's all.

If your eyes had been born slanted, and every time you looked in the glass, which is Franklin, you'd seen your eyes going this way, you'd got used to that, and you'd said, they're pretty, aren't they?

And the fellow that came along with straight-across eyes, you'd just say, isn't that a weird-looking outfit? It's just depending upon what you're used to. You think the Lord looked at the direction your eyes run when he died for you?

No, he died for your heart, not for the slant of your eyes. So there they are behind the Iron Curtain. There they are in North Korea. There they are in many of the lands in Asia and in Europe. And they're waiting quietly the hour when the chains will be broken, political chains, and they can hear the gospel preached one more time.

If you want to read something encouraging, get a copy of the World Report, United States News and World Report, from last week, and read the report of that priest who came over here, who was driven out of Moscow, you remember?

Well, he was interviewed by the press, and he tells the story about how they packed the churches out there, not sitting but standing. They have no seat, and standing. Only one Catholic Church, but he says the Orthodox Church, the Baptist Churches, they fill them up behind the Iron Curtain.

Over there where they throw their weight around, and the secret police are looking to get their men. Still there are sheep, God's sheep. God's black sheep in Africa, God's copper-colored sheep in South America, and God's yellow sheep in Asia.

He has his other sheep. And I pray that this Church will never forget. I pray that we'll never, never, never forget. And that we will see to it that as we come up soon to the missionary convention, that we'll have upon us a sense of alertness and interest and keen desire for the lost sheep and the other sheep that are not of this whole.

The Imperative of Bringing in the Lost Sheep

Then I notice here the imperative. He says, them also I must bring. I must bring. I want to bring? No. I hope to bring? No. I must bring them. It is the imperative of Christian mission. We must make some radical changes, we white people, so-called, and begin to think differently.

We must begin to remember that we're no dearer to God than the colored races. We must remember that we haven't exhausted the grace of God. When the Lord blessed us, he didn't exhaust his fount of mercy.

But it's an infinite fountain. And while there are, as the brother prayed, about a billion people in the world who haven't heard the gospel, that billion is a limited number. You can put it down on a blackboard.

Put a one and then put nine ciphers after it, and you've got a billion. But there's no limit to the grace of God. You can put down a one and then start writing ciphers after it and keep on for a million years, and you're no nearer to exhausting the grace of God than you were when you started.

If all the stars in the heavens were ciphers, or all the grace hands by the seashore innumerable were ciphers, and you had a blackboard as wide as the sky, you could write down ciphers and run up where we're not even mathematicians know what to call it, up and up and up beyond all human thinking.

And when you put a period, you'd still be finite. But the grace of God is infinite. It goes on and on and on beyond. So God's not exhausted his grace yet. Don't you worry about that. There's lots of grace for all the people in the wide world.

Now he says, them also I must bring, and I want to know how he brings them. And the answer is, they shall hear my voice. That is, they hear his voice in the voice of his messengers, the voice of them that go.

Now here's a little confusion of metaphor, but I want you to put this down in your mind and remember it. He finds his lost sheep by sending his found sheep. That's the way he finds them. He sends his found sheep to find his lost sheep.

And while the figure shows us the shepherd going after the sheep, what doesn't say there is that the shepherd is also the priest at the right hand of God, and that when he goes after sheep, he goes after sheep in the person of his under-shepherd.

And his under-shepherd, as it says in Ezekiel, my sheep are men. So he sends his found sheep after his lost sheep. And it's by means of his found ones that he finds his lost ones. And this obligation lies on us.