10 Shekels and a Shirt II (Paris Reidhead) | The Whole Counsel

Paris Reidhead and the Origin of “Ten Shekels and a Shirt”

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder. And this week we're returning to a sermon preached by a man that I introduced to you last podcast. And in that podcast, we talked about Paris Reedhead.

He was a missionary to Africa, a pastor in New York City, and a humanitarian worker. Reedhead preached this sermon based on Judges 17, and it's entitled, Ten Shekels and a Shirt. It's been called one of the most influential sermons of the 20th century.

I already introduced you to the preacher, so let me now just kind of talk a little bit about how the sermon came about. It is unusual. In 1964, Paris Reedhead was invited to preach at the Bethany Missionary Church, or the Bethany Fellowship, in Bloomington, Minnesota.

And it was a deeper life conference, so the emphasis would be on Christians growing, particularly in holiness. It appears that after attempting to prepare his heart and mind for the conference, he still wasn't sure what he was going to preach when he arrived at the conference the day that he was supposed to speak.

So he said that he was sitting in the church fellowship hall, the dining hall there, and really laboring on, you know, not knowing what he was going to speak on in just a few hours. And the Lord gave him a clarity, and he took a napkin, and he scribbled the notes down on the napkin, and he got up, and he went and preached this sermon.

Now, after the sermon, he noted that there was no unusual outward response at the time. It always amazed him in later years to see how God had used this one sermon so powerfully to impact so many people.

So we're going to pick back up with the second half of the sermon, where he really deals with the heart of man-centeredness in evangelicalism and exposes it. I hope you can benefit from it.

The Critique of Man-Centered Evangelicalism

It becomes so subtle that it goes everywhere. What is it? In essence, it's this. That this philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man has been sort of covered over with evangelical terms and biblical doctrine until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ is incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist in the...

Everything is for the happiness of man, and I submit to you that this is unchristian. Isn't man happy? Didn't God intend to make man happy? But as a by-product, and not a prime product. What is it with that good man that's so admired by the fuzzy thinkers of our day out there in Africa?

Dear Dr. Schweitzer, bless his heart, he's a brilliant man, a philosopher, doctor, musician, composer. Undoubtedly a brilliant man. Dr. Schweitzer is no more Christian than this rose, and he would call it a personal insult if he were to say he was a Christian.

He doesn't see Christ as having any relevance to his philosophy or life. Dr. Schweitzer is a humanist. Dr. Schweitzer was sitting on the bow of a boat going up the broad Congo River toward his station, watching the Belgian government officials with their high-powered rifles shooting at the crocodiles sunning on the mud flats along the river.

And they were expert marksmen, and as they would use these dum-dum bullets that would explode inside the crocodile and just send them spinning up into the air from the contraction of muscles. And he said, how do you know so much about it?

Well, to my shame, I would give you the same thing in denial. And they were there, and this was what their sport was. They'd bag them, and they'd take towels, and they'd put strings around the place where their gun was, they had a little place for the gun, and they'd tie knobs so they could see how many crocodiles they killed.

A colossal waste of life. And it was there that Schweitzer saw the essence of his philosophy. And do you know what it is? Three words. Reverence for life. Life! Human life. And other kinds of life. My friend George Klein, who was with us last week going back to the Gaboon, was just about 50 or 60 miles away from Dr. Schweitzer's station.

You know, Dr. Schweitzer is so convinced of the reverence of life that he doesn't like to sterilize his surgery. It's the dirtiest surgery in Africa. Because bacteria are life, and he doesn't want his surgery, and he's a good bacteria with a bad, so he sort of lets them all grow together.

His organ broke. Someone had sent him out an organ and the means of playing it, and so Mr. Klein, as an expert organist and an organ repairer as well, so he went over to see Dr. Schweitzer, and Dr. Schweitzer said, George, do you think you could fix my organ?

He said, I wouldn't be surprised. Let me try it. So he took the back off, and it was amazing that he discovered a huge nest of cockroaches. With characteristic American enthusiasm and zeal, George started toppling all over the cockroaches, not to let a one of them get away.

And the good doctor came out, his hair standing straighter than it had for a long time, and because of his anger, and he said, you stop that right now. George says, why? They're hurting your organ. He said, that's all right.

They were just being true to their nature. He said, you can't kill those. So one of the boys came in and said, it's all right, Mr. Klein. He reached down very tenderly and picked them up and put them in a little bag, and he crimped the top, and he put each cockroach in, and then they took them out in the jungle and let them loop.

Now here was a man that believed his philosophy, reverence for life, utterly committed to it, utterly consistent, even when it came to the matter of a cockroach or a microbe. Do you see? This is humanism.

This is consistency. Now I ask you, what is the philosophy of mission? What is the philosophy of evangelism? What is the philosophy of a Christian? If you'll ask me why I went to Africa, I'll tell you I went primarily to improve on the justice of God.

I didn't think it was right for anybody to go to hell without a chance to be saved. And so I went to give poor sinners a chance to go to heaven. Now I hadn't put it in so many words, but if you'll analyze what I've just told you, do you know what it is?

It's humanism. That I was simply using the provisions of Jesus Christ as a means to improve upon human conditions of suffering and misery. And when I got to Africa, I discovered that they weren't poor ignorant little heathen running around in the woods looking for someone to tell them how to go to heaven.

That they were monsters of iniquity that were living in utter and total defiance of far more knowledge of God than I ever dreamed they had. They deserved hell because they utterly refused to walk in the light of their conscience and the light of the law written upon their heart and the testimony of nature and the truth they knew.

And when I found that out, I assure you, I was so angry with God that one occasion in prayer I told him that it was a mighty little thing he'd done, sending me out there to reach these people that were waiting to be told how to go to heaven.

When I got there, I found out they knew about heaven and didn't want to go there, and that they loved their sin and wanted to stay in it. I went out there motivated by humanism. I'd seen pictures of lepers, I'd seen pictures of ulcers, I'd seen pictures of native funerals, and I didn't want my fellow human beings to suffer in hell eternally after such a miserable existence on earth.

But it was there in Africa that God began to tear through the overlay of this humanism. And it was that day in my bedroom with the door locked that I wrestled with God, for I was coming to grips with the fact that the people that I thought were ignorant and wanted to know how to go to heaven and were saying, someone come and teach us, actually didn't want to take time to talk with me or anybody else.

They had no interest in the Bible and no interest in Christ, and they loved their sin and wanted to continue in it. And I was to the place at that time where I felt the whole thing was a sham and a mockery, and I'd been told a bill of goods.

And I wanted to come home, and there alone in my bedroom, as I faced God honestly with what my heart felt, it seemed to me I heard Him say, yes, will not the judge of all the earth do right? The heathen are lost, and they're going to go to hell not because they haven't heard the gospel.

They're going to go to hell because they are sinners who love their sin, and because they deserve hell. I didn't send you out there for them. I didn't send you out there for their sake. And I heard as clearly as I've ever heard, though it wasn't with physical voice, but it was the echo of truth of the ages finding its way into an open heart.

I heard God say to my heart that day something like this. I didn't send you to Africa for the sake of the heathen. I sent you to Africa for my sake. They deserve hell, but I love them, and I endured the agonies of hell for them.

I didn't send you out there for them. I sent you out there for me. Do I not deserve the reward of my suffering? Don't I deserve those for whom I died? And it reversed it all, and changed it all, and righted it all.

And I wasn't any longer working for my cup and ten shekels in a jar, but I was serving the living God. Not for the sake of the heathen. I was there for the Savior that endured the agonies of hell for the heathen, who didn't deserve it.

But he deserved hell, because he died for it. Do you see? Let me epitomize. Let me summarize. Christianity says the end of all being is the glory. Humanism says the end of all being is the happiness of man.

And one was born in hell, the deification of man, and the other was born in heaven, the glorification of God. And one is Levi serving Micah, and the other is a heart that's unworthy serving the living God because of the highest honor in the universe.

Repentance, Conviction, and the Glory of God

What about you? Why did you repent? I'd like to see some people repent on biblical terms again. And would George Whitfield know it? He stood on Boston Common speaking to 20 ,000 people, and he said, You're monsters.

Monsters of iniquity. You deserve hell. And the worst of your crimes is that criminals, though you've been, you haven't had the good grace to see it. He said if you will not weep for your sins and your crimes against the Holy God, George Whitfield will weep for you.

That man would put his head back, and he would sob like a baby. Why? Because they were in danger of hell? No. But because they were monsters of iniquity that didn't even see the inner care about their crime.

Do you see the difference? Do you see the difference? The difference is here's somebody trembling because he's going to be hurt in hell, and he has no sense of the enormity of his guilt, and no sense of the enormity of his crime, and no sense of his insult against deity.

He's only trembling because his skin is about to be singed. He's afraid. And I submit to you that whereas fear is this good office work in preparing us for grace, there's no place to stop. The Holy Ghost doesn't stop there.

And that's the reason why no one can savingly receive Christ until they've repented, and no one can repent until they've been convicted. And conviction is the work of the Holy Ghost that helps a sinner to see that he is a criminal before God and deserves all of God's wrath, and if God were to send him to the lowest corner of a devil's hell forever and ten eternities, that he deserves it all and a hundredfold more, because he's seen his crime.

He's not unconvinced he's caught, but he has seen his crime. And this is the difference between twentieth-century preaching and the preaching of John Wesley. Wesley was a preacher of righteousness that exalted the holiness of God, and when he would stand there with a two to three-hour sermon that he was accustomed to deliver in the open air, and he would exalt the holiness of God, and the law of God, and the righteousness of God, and the justice of God, and the wisdom of his requirements, and the justice of his wrath and his anger, and then he would turn to sinners and tell them of the enormity of their crimes and their open rebellion, and the treason and their anarchy.

The power of God would so descend upon the company that on one occasion it is reliably reported that when the people dispersed, there were eighteen hundred people lying on the ground utterly unconscious, because they'd had a revelation of the holiness of God, and in the light of that they'd seen the enormity of their sin.

And God had so penetrated their minds and hearts that they had fallen to the ground. It wasn't only in Wesley's day, it was also in America. New Haven, Connecticut, Yale. A man by the name of John Wesley Redfield had continuous ministry for three years in and around New Haven, culminating in the great meetings in the Yale Bowl, the first of the Yale Bowl back in the 18th century.

And the policemen were accustomed during those days, if they saw someone lying on the ground, to go up and smell his breath, because if he had alcohol in his breath, they'd lock him up. But if he didn't, he had Wesley Redfield's disease.

And all you needed to do if anyone had Redfield's disease was just take them into a quiet place and leave them till they came to, because if they were drunkards, they didn't stop drinking. And if they were cruel, they stopped being cruel.

And if they were immoral, they gave up their immorality. If they were thieves, they returned what they had. For as they had seen the holiness of God and seen the enormity of their sin, the Spirit of God had driven them down into unconsciousness because of the weight of their guilt.

And somehow in this overspreading of the power of God, sinners repented of their sin and came savingly to Christ. But there was a difference. It wasn't trying to convince good men that he was in trouble with a bad God, but that it was to convince bad men that they deserved the wrath and anger of a good God.

And the consequence was repentance that led to faith and led to life. Dear friends, there's only one reason, one reason for a sinner to repent, and that's because Jesus Christ deserves the worship and the adoration and the love and the obedience of his heart, not because he'll go to heaven.

If the only reason you repented, dear friend, was to keep out of hell, all you are is just a Levite serving for ten shekels and a shirt. That's all. You're trying to serve God because he'll do you good.

But a repentant heart is a heart that has seen something of the enormity of the crime of playing God and denying the just and righteous God the worship and obedience that he deserves. Why should a sinner repent?

Because God deserves the obedience and love that he has refused to give him. It's not so that he'll go to heaven. The only reason he repents is so that he'll go to heaven. It's not him trying to make a deal or a bargain with God.

Why should a sinner give up all his sins? Why should he be challenged to do it? Why should he make restitution when he's coming to Christ? Because God deserves the obedience that he demands. I have talked with people that have no assurance of sins forgiven.

They want to feel saved before they're willing to commit themselves to Christ. But I believe that the only ones whom God actually witnesses by his Spirit they're born again are the people, whether they're saved or not, that come to Jesus Christ and say something like this, Lord Jesus, I'm going to obey you and love you and serve you and do what you want me to do as long as I live, even if I go to hell at the end of the road, simply because you are worthy to be loved and obeyed and served.

And I'm not trying to make a deal with you. Do you see the difference? Do you see the difference between being a Levite serving for ten shekels in a church or a Micah building a chapel because God will do you good and someone that repents for the glory of God?

Why should a person come to the cross? Why should a person embrace death with Christ? Why should a person be willing to go in identification down to the cross and into the tomb and up again? I'll tell you why.

Because it's the only way that God can get glory out of a human being. If you say it's because you'll get joy or peace or blessing or success or fame, then it's nothing but a Levite serving for ten shekels in a church.

There's only one reason for you to go to the cross, dear young person. And that's because until you've come to the place of union with Christ in death, you are defrauding the Son of God of the glory that he could get out of your life.

For no flesh shall glory in sight. And until you've understood the sanctifying work of God by the Holy Ghost, taking you into union with Christ in death and burial and resurrection, you have to serve in what you have and all you have.

That which is under the sentence of death. Human personality and human nature and human strength and human energy. And God will get no glory out of that. And so the reason for you to go to the cross isn't that you're going to get victory.

You will get victory. It isn't that if you're going to have joy, you will have joy. But the reason for you to embrace the cross and press through until you know that you can testify with Paul, I'm crucified with Christ, isn't what you're going to get out of it, but what you'll get out of it.

For the glory of God. By the same token, why aren't you pressed through to know the fullness of the Holy Spirit? Why aren't you pressed through to know the fullness of Christ? I'll tell you why. Because the only possible way that Jesus Christ will get glory out of a life that he's redeemed with his precious blood is when he can fill that life with his presence and live through it his own life.

The genius of our faith wasn't that we were going to go through the motions like a Levite that were hired to serve God. No, no. The genius of our faith was that we'd come to the place where we knew we couldn't do nothing and all we could do would be to present the vessel and say, Lord Jesus, you left us.

And everything that's done will have to be done by you and for you. But, oh, I know so many people that are trying to know the fullness of God so that they can use God. A young preacher came to me down in West Virginia.

How near from West Virginia? I think we should sit. By the way, I've got a great church. We've got a wonderful Sunday school program. We've got a radio ministry. Drawing. But I feel a personal need and a personal lack.

I need to be baptized with the Holy Ghost. I need to be filled with the Spirit. And someone told me, God's done something for you. And I wondered if you could help me. I looked at the fellow. You know what he looked like?

Me. Just looked like me. I just saw in him everything that was in me. You thought I was going to say me before. No. Listen to your heart. If you've ever seen yourself, you'll know that you're never going to be anything else than you were.

For in me, in my flesh, there's no good thing. Looked like me? He was like a fellow driving up on a big Cadillac, you know, to someone standing at a filling station. Say, fill her up, buddy, with the highest octane you've got.

Well, that's the way it looked. He wanted power for his program. And God is not going to be a means to anyone's end. He said, I'm awfully sorry. I don't think I can help you. He said, why? I don't think you're ready.

I said, well, suppose you consider yourself coming up with a Cadillac. You've talked about your program. You've talked about your radio. You've talked about your Sunday school insurance. Very good. You've done wonderfully well without the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's what the Chinese Christian said, you know, when he got back to China. What impressed you most about America? He said, the great things Americans can accomplish without God. And he'd accomplished a great deal, admittedly, without God.

Now he's wanted something, power, to accomplish his ends even further. I said, no, no. You're sitting behind the wheel and you're saying to God, give me power so I can go. You won't work. You've got to slide over.

But I knew that rascal, because I knew me. I said, no, it'll never do. You've got to get in the backseat. I could see him leaning over and grabbing the wheel. No, I said, it'll never do in the backseat.

I said, before God will do anything for you, you know what you've got to do? He said, what? I said, you've got to get out of the car, take the keys around, open up the trunk lid, hand the keys to the Lord Jesus, get inside the trunk, slam the lid down, whisper through the keyhole, Lord, look, fill her up with anything you want and you drive.

It's up to you from now on. And that's why so many people, you know, do not enter into the fullness of Christ, because they want to become a Levite with 10 shekels and a shirt. They've been serving Micah, but they think if they had the power of the Holy Ghost, they could serve the tribe of Dan.

It'll never work. There's only one reason for God meeting you, and that's to bring you to the place where In repentance, you've been pardoned for his glory. And in victory, you've been brought to the place of death that he might reign.

And in the fullness, Jesus Christ is able to live and walk in you. And your attitude is the attitude of the Lord himself, who said, I can do nothing of myself. I can't speak of myself. I don't make plans for myself.

My only reason for being is the glory of God in Jesus Christ. If I were to say to you, come to be saved so you can go to heaven. Come to the cross so that you can have joy and victory. Come to the fullness of the Spirit so that you can be satisfied.

I'd be falling into the trap of humanism. I'm going to say to you, dear friend, if you're out here without Christ, you come to Jesus Christ and serve him as long as you live, whether you go to hell at the end of the way, because he's worthy.

I say to you, Christian friend, you come to the cross and join him in union and death and enter into all the meaning of death itself in order that he can have glory. I say to you, dear Christian, if you do not know the fullness of the Holy Ghost, come and present your body a living sacrifice and let him fill you so that he can have the purpose for his coming fulfilled in you and get glory in your life.

It's not what you're going to get out of God. It's what he is going to get out of you. Let's be done once and for all with utilitarian Christianity that makes God a means instead of the glorious end that he is.

Let's resign. Let's tell Micah we're through. We're no longer going to be his priest serving for ten shekels and a shirt. Let's tell the tribe of Dan we're through. And let's come and cast ourselves at the feet of the nail-fierce son of God and tell him that we're going to obey him and love him and serve him as long as we live, because he is worthy.

Moravian Mission and the Reward of Christ’s Suffering

Two young Moravians heard of an island in the West Indies where an atheist British owner had 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 slaves. The owner had said, No preacher, no clergyman will ever stay on this island. If he's shipwrecked, we'll keep him in a separate house until he has to leave, but he's never going to talk to any of us about God.

I'm through with all that nonsense. 3 ,000 slaves from the jungles of Africa bought to an island in the Atlantic and there to live and die without hearing a cry. Two young Moravians heard about it. They sold themselves to the British planter and used the money they received from the sale, for he paid no more than he would for any slave to pay their passage out to his island, for he wouldn't even transport them.

And as the ship left the river at Homburg, left its pier in the river at Homburg and was going out into the North Sea, carried with the tide, the Moravians had come from Hurnhoek to see these two lads off in the early twenties, never to return again, for this wasn't a four-year term.

And they'd sold themselves into lifetime slavery, simply that as slaves they could be a Christian, or these others were. The families were there weeping, for they knew they'd never see them again. And they wondered why they were going and questioned the wisdom of it.

And as the gap widened and the houses had been cast off and were being curled up there on the pier, the young boy saw the widening gap. One lad with his arm linked to the arm of his fellow raised his hand and shouted across the gap the last words that were heard from them.

They were these, May the lamb that was slain receive the reward of his suffering. And this became the cause of Moravian mission. And this is the only reason for being that the lamb that was slain may receive the reward of his suffering.

That concludes the sermon, Ten Shekels and a Shirt by Paris Reedhead. And if you did not listen to the first half, please go back and listen to that. I think you'll find it beneficial. I hope that these words will follow you for years to come.

How the Sermon Shaped Christ Church New Albany

I can still remember the very first time that I listened to this sermon. It was 20 or 21 years ago. I had come to the church early on a Sunday morning. I normally do get there early, but I normally get there a couple of hours early, but it was daylight savings time and I had gotten mixed up and this was before smartphones.

So I got there three, three and a half hours early. So after getting everything ready for the service, I still had a lot of time. And instead of going back home, I found a cassette tape that a friend had recently given me.

His name is Rick Couples, a very dear godly friend. And I trusted this friend. And so I thought, well, I'll listen to the sermon because he gave it a glowing report. So I listened to that sermon before everyone arrived at church and I was really floored.

It was so clear. So weighty, so beneficial to my soul. I felt like he said things that so desperately needed to be said and he said them in a way that was unmistakable. It just really peeled back all the layers and got to the heart of the issue.

So I talked with the other pastor at the time and we agreed that our church needed to listen to it and not just to recommend it. But that evening, we took that cassette tape and we found a cassette tape player and we plugged it in and the whole church for the service sat quietly and listened to a pretty poor quality recording of this sermon.

But it was beneficial. It really helped the people. In the earliest days at Christ Church, this was in the first year, it helped us to understand why. Why were we talking about turning our hearts from a man-centered approach to loving man to a God-centered approach to loving man.

I hope that you'll be able to listen to this. There will be links in the show notes to the audio and to a printed version of the sermon. I hope you'll be able to recommend it to people. But more than anything, that you'll find room to apply it.

And this is the kind of thing that goes deep. So you'll probably have to take a spiritual pickaxe and you may have to listen to it more than once to make sure really that the roots are gotten a hold of so that it doesn't just continue to sprout back up later.

A God-centered religion, the most delightful thing.