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

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Psalm 119: An Introduction

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast, I'm Jon Snider, 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.

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He was a missionary to Africa, a pastor in New York City, and a humanitarian worker.

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Reedhead preached this sermon based on Judges 17, and it's entitled, Ten Shekels and a

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Shirt. It's been called one of the most influential sermons of the 20th century.

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I already introduced you to the preacher, so let me now just kind of talk a little bit about how the sermon came about.

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It is unusual. In 1964, Paris Reedhead was invited to preach at the

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Now after the sermon, he noted that there was no unusual outward response at the time.

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It always amazed him in later years to see how God had used this one sermon so powerfully to impact so many people.

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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.

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I hope you can benefit from it. I'm afraid that it's become so subtle that it goes everywhere.

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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,

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Jesus Christ is incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist in the whole, everything is for the happiness of man, and I submit to you that this is unchristian.

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Isn't man happy? Didn't God intend to make man happy? But as a by -product, and not a by -product.

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What is it with that good man that's so admired by the fuzzy thinkers of our day out there in Africa, dear

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Dr. Schweitzer, bless his heart, he's a brilliant man, a philosopher, a doctor, a musician, a composer, undoubtedly a brilliant man, but Dr.

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Schweitzer is no more Christian than this rose, and he would, it's called it a personal insult if he were to say he was a

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Christian, but he doesn't see Christ as having any relevance to his philosophy or life.

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And Dr. Schweitzer is a humanist, and Dr. Schweitzer was sitting on the bow of the boat going up the broad

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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.

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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.

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And he said, how do you know so much about it? Well, to my shame, I was guilty of the same thing in denial. And they were there, this was what their sport was.

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They'd bagged them, and they'd take towels, and they'd put strings around the place where their gun was, and they'd have little plates for the gun, and they'd tie knobs so that they could see how many crocodiles they killed.

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A colossal waste of life. And it was there that Schweitzer saw the essence of his philosophy.

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And do you know what it is? Three words. Reverence for life.

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Reverence for life! Crocodile life. Human life.

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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.

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Schweitzer's station. You know, Dr. Schweitzer is so convinced of the reverence of life that he doesn't like to sterilize his surgery.

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He has the dirtiest surgery in Africa, because bacteria are life, and he doesn't want his surgery.

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And he's a good bacteria with a bad, so he sort of lets them all grow together. His organ broke.

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Someone had sent him out an organ, and the means of playing it, and so Mr. Schweitzer and Mr. Klein, as an expert organist and an organ repairer as well, so he went over to see

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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.

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With characteristic American enthusiasm and zeal, George started promptly mowing the cockroaches, not to let a one of them get away.

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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.

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George says, why? They're already your organ. He says, that's all right. They were just being true to their nature. He said, you can't kill those.

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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 they took them out in the jungle and let them loose.

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Now, here was a man that believed his philosophy, reverence for life, utterly committed to it.

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Utterly consistent, even when it came to the matter of a cockroach or a microbe.

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Do you see? This is humanism. This is consistency.

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Now, I ask you, what is the philosophy of mission? What is the philosophy of evangelism?

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What is the philosophy of a Christian? If you'll ask me why I went to Africa, I'll tell you,

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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.

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I didn't think it was right for anybody to go to hell without a chance to be saved. 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

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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.

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And when I got to Africa, I discovered that they weren't poor, ignorant little heathen running around in the woods, waiting for, looking for someone to tell them how to go to heaven.

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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.

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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.

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And when I found that out, I assure you, I was so angry with God that one occasion in prayer