Hymnsing Talk—John Bilisoly
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But as far as I'm concerned, I think it'd be nice to keep singing. But I've been asked to say a few words, so with the Lord's help, I will.
One thing that's always been an exercise for me and speaking, and I think others that have spoken in this way would testify to this, is that sooner or later the Lord tests you on what you say. So, umm, it's, it's sobering to think about that. Anyway, let's ask the Lord for His help.
Our loving God and our Father, we thank Thee that we can be together and we can sing these hymns. What a wonderful heritage we have. We thank Thee that Thou has put a song in our heart, even praise unto Thy name, and we just ask for Thy help now, so we open Thy precious word. We've had some exercising things today and much to think about, and so we just pray for Thy help as we look into Thy word for just a few moments.
We ask for thy help. We thank thee for thy beloved Son, the one whom we have to speak of.
We thank you for the work on Calvary's cross, for the blessed hope of his coming again. Encourage our hearts, We pray and we pray for the young people too, and their time together later, for safety and their activities. We thank you that they can be together. We ask this now and asking for thy help in Jesus precious and worthy name, Amen.
Well, we've heard some exercising things today. We heard from our brother Bill about being overcomers.
To be not overcome with evil, but to overcome evil with good. We also had our brother Paul bring before us.
The thought of deliverance and to be a deliverer, and I trust that what I have on my heart ties in with that what I've been thinking about.
Of late is being shepherds and so I wanna just look briefly at the subject of being shepherds and uh, I wanna start with.
A portion that we're familiar with in Ezekiel chapter 34, where the Spirit of God gives the prophet Ezekiel some words to speak to the conscience of shepherds. And he speaks very forcefully and, umm, it's really kind of a severe indictment, you might say, against these shepherds. But what I wanted to focus on was.
Not so much all of this portion that he speaks about.
But I wanna pick out one phrase here in the third verse that the Lord has been bringing before me over and over again. And it may seem like a strange, umm portion to pick out here, a statement out of this portion. But I feel like that's what the Lord has laid on my heart. And I trust that we can draw an application and that my brother and will bear with me in making an application from this.
Statement here.
But it's in the third verse. I'll just read the verse. Umm, he says ye to the shepherds. He says ye eat the fat, ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed, but you feed not the flock. Now we could read on and it's, it's a kind of, it's a very dismal, sad picture, but the, the little phrase that I wanna focus on.
This evening is Angie clothe you with the wall. Now I can understand readily that.
He criticized them for eating the fat because we're we were told that in their sacrifices the fat was the Lord's, and that's in Leviticus 3, but the fat was to be the Lord's.
And certainly we know it's it's clear. It says you kill them that are fed and you and you feed them not We can understand those things. But why does the Spirit of God give Ezekiel to say?
Umm, that you? You clothed you with the wall.
So I thought about that and umm, I began to to ponder that and and I trust that what I wanna share with you would be from the Lord because I, I believe that.
We need shepherds. Shepherds are an important function in a flock. And just as we need overseers and just as we need deliverers, we also need shepherds. No Paul could talk about uh, to the Corinthians. He could say in that 4th chapter that although you have 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers? And I kind of think of that word fathers as similar to.
Shepherds and perhaps each of us in our lives can think of those that we look to and we say, you know.
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That person, I, I, they, they've been like a father to me.
I don't know if any of you have had this experience, but how many of you, maybe you children? Uh, two? How many of you have ever seen sheep being shared?
OK, not too many of us, but a handful of us. Well, for the boys and the girls that are in the room here, especially the boys, maybe you've had your mother or your father take out the electric Clippers and give you a haircut. Have you ever had a haircut with the electric Clippers? I hear a few chuckles. I, I did as a boy. Umm, anyway, I was at a place one time where there was, umm, four or five people that were up on a stage like this and they were shearing sheep and, uh, they all had.
Clippers in their hands, and when the time was to start, they began to shear those sheep and they move fast. And those sheep look big and bulky and they had a thick, heavy coat of wool on a fleece of wool. And in just a matter of minutes there was a pile of wool around the sheep. And they looked totally different. They looked.
Scared and and then they, they were frightened, I'm sure, and they and they looked umm.
Like they, they didn't know what to do and they they had lost their, their heavy coat. And some of them even had little trickles of blood coming down where the Clippers had gotten too close to the flesh. Because these men were working against time and they were competing to see who could do the cleanest job and the fastest job of sharing these sheep. Well, I thought about this. You know, we could, we could look at that sheep again by way of application is that which belongs to that sheep.
That's his coat, that's his covering and it's been taken away and.
These shepherds here, they were taking that which belonged to someone else. I think that's the thought here. Perhaps in being closed with the wool, they were taking that which belonged to someone else. And I just thought about that and it was exercising me to think what kind of a shepherd would I be?
Would I take or would I give? Would I give something to the flock or would I take from them?
And that I found that searching for my own heart and that, you know, led me to think about the occasions in the scripture that we have sheep sharing. And there's not very many of them. I was surprised I was only able to find four of them and total in, in the scriptures where there's actually, uh, sheep sharing that's going on. And so I took a look at those.
And that's what I'd like to do tonight is to quickly look at those. We're not gonna develop them because we don't have time. But the first one is, is in Genesis 31. So if we look at that in Genesis 31, maybe before we go there, I would like to just say this. We talked about this covering, umm, being the sheets, wool, his, his fleece, his covering his coat, if you will.
You know, we have quite a bit in scripture about heart covering as believers.
Umm, we're to be close with humility.
And we're told that God, this is Peter speaking to the Saints there in the 5th chapter. And he says to be, yeah, all of you be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.
Paul tells us to put on therefore. I've just jotted these down to save time. In Colossians chapter 3, Paul says put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering.
For bearing one another, For giving one another.
Another one is in uh, Romans chapter 13.
Or umm, I'm sorry. And yes, in Romans chapter 13.
It says Paul says to the Saints there he says the night is far spent.
And the days that had put on therefore the Armor of Light.
Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ. He ends up by saying there and so we could look at these things and we could think about that which we have been given as a covering and you know we have an enemy and that's what I want to talk about tonight is that we have an enemy that wants to take away these things that are should be precious to us this covering.
He wants to take it away just like these shepherds were doing to the children of Israel. They were taking away that which belonged to the sheep. And you know, umm, in the coming day. The nation of Israel is referred to in Isaiah chapter 18 as a nation that is umm, scattered and peeled, it says in our translation.
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And the King, Mr. Darby's translation, he uses the word ravaged, or if you look at a footnote, he says peeled or plucked. So the there's a a day coming when the nation is going to go through.
Some terrible times at the end of the tribulation period in that time of the consumption. And there's going to be those invading armies that come down and they're going to literally peel away everything in their path. Well, you know, the enemy wants to take that which we've enjoyed today. He wants to take those things that we have in Christ and he wants to take them from us and.
The exercise for us, you know, I think we can all, in a way, be shepherds.
I don't look at being shepherds as a particular gift.
Like being a an instructor or a teacher. But shepherding care is so important and we need it. And we can each be, in our own way, a shepherd. And how? What kind of shepherds are we? We're gonna look at the end of our little talk here shortly. We're gonna look at the characteristics of the Lord Jesus in this same chapter as what kind of a shepherd he is. And that we might.
Seek to imitate the way he shepherds and be like him.
But let's look briefly at these four accounts. We're like I said, we're not gonna develop, develop them. The first one is in Genesis 31. And what I found searching to my own heart was in that in each of these accounts, there is evil going on. There is evil that is being developed, that is going on behind the scenes. So we have in Genesis 31, this is the account of where, and I'm going to presume here that we know these stories.
I'm not going to, to read much, but I just wanna read. Uh, this is where, uh, Jacob is, is fleeing from his father-in-law, Laban. And before he goes, his daughter does something and it tells us what she did in verse 19.
Umm, but I need to read. Let's see here.
It tells us that there was, umm, sheep sharing going on. And I'm trying to find where that is. Yeah. Thank you. Verse 19 of Genesis 31. And Laban went to shear his sheep, and Rachel had stolen the images that were her father's. We won't read anymore. So we know what happened. They're they're leaving. They left in a hurry. And Rachel sees these images and she wants them and she steals them and she hides them in the furniture.
Of her camel that she's on. And we know the story that Laban accuses Jacob.
Of stealing his idols and he he says, uh, whoever has stolen let him be thy servant and so on well we know that Rachel had them but she made excuses she deceived her father and she wasn't found out but.
She stole those idols. Those idols had value to her. And I thought of this, that the what is characterized in this first account where we have this sheep sharing going on is idolatry. And I thought of that, dear young people and each of us here in this room and being a shepherd, are there things in my life that are like idols that hinder me from being a shepherd?
That hinder me from really being able to be a shepherd. Things that I value and that I hang on to.
So I see in this here, I'm gonna call it idolatry. And you know, idolatry is a serious thing. Idolatry is a serious thing and we are, uh, warned against it in the word of God about idolatry, where to flee from idolatry? Paul says, dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. I, I believe that idolatry is a hindrance to shepherding care.
And idolatry for us.
Is not what we think of normally as idolatry, but I think each of us can perhaps think of things that are a hindrance to us in reaching out to others, things that are important in our lives that consume a lot of time. Well, it's exercising, isn't it? To think that umm, Rachel stole these idols, idolatry going on in her heart. Now let's go to the next one here in Genesis 38, just a few pages over.
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And we have another very sad account. And again, umm, we know that, uh, it involves, uh.
It involves Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar, and it tells us here in verse 12. In the process of time, the daughter of Shua, Judah's wife died. And Judah was comforted and went up unto his sheep shearers, to timneth he and his friend Hira the Adolamite. And it was told Tamar saying, Behold, thy father-in-law goeth up to Timna to shear his sheep. Well, I'm again I I can't take the time to read all.
We know what happens, that she goes and she disguise herself as a harlot and Judah goes into her. We have here what I would call immorality. And I believe that that is something too, that can be a real hindrance to shepherding care and morality or inordinate affections. And Paul talks about it. Others in the New Testament talk about the seriousness of this.
I believe that that can be a real hindrance to this wonderful work of shepherding care. Oh, let's be careful, says what Paul says in in first Corinthians 6. What know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that you are not your own, that you've been bought with a price and so on. So let's be careful that.
This particular problem that is so characteristic in this world.
That wants to take away what we have. That wants to take away this covering. Let's be careful about this. Now let's go on to the next one, the third one, and that's in First Samuel 25. First Samuel chapter 25. And we know the story again, this kind of a sad chapter. Samuel dies at the beginning of the chapter. We're told that. And then David is in rejection. And there's this man named Nabel who has all these sheep.
And we're told here that, uh.
He had umm great his possessions were in Carmel and the mammoth was very great in verse two and he had 3000 sheep and 1000 goats, and he was shearing his sheep and na in Carmel. Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal and the name of his wife Abigail, and she was a woman of good understanding and of a beautiful countenance. But the man was churlish and evil in his doings, and he was at the House of Caleb.
And David heard in the wilderness that Naval did shear his sheep.
So here's another account of the shearing of sheep in Scripture. And what's going on is David comes in a gracious way. He, they have been a wall to this man and to his, his, uh, sheep, uh, herders and, uh, he had, they had protected them from evil beasts and so on and from those that would, uh, seek to steal and rob. And so this man benefited greatly from David's men. And David comes since some of his men.
And he just asked for, uh, anything that naval might be able to spare that that could be a help to him in the way of sustenance. And we know how he treated David. He despised him. Well, I didn't know exactly what label to put on this. You could maybe put other labels. But I think what characterized this in my mind is that here is a man that is acting in the flesh. And we know that the flesh is that sin nature that each of us have. And here is a man that has.
No regard for David, he acts in a very fleshly way and so how serious it is and the flesh in US can be a hindrance to doing this work of shepherding. And so we're told to umm that the the flesh lusteth against the spirit in Galatians and the two are contrary, the one to the other. There's a a warfare going on and the flesh is a real hindrance to us and it's.
It it's something that we each struggle with and we need grace from the Lord to put it down to keep it in the place of death so that we might be able to to go on to enjoy that those things that we have that are covering and that we might be able to to administer to others. Well, I just thought of that here. What a serious umm thing. And we know the consequence of this, that David almost took things into his own hand, but the Lord.
Heard him and the Lord in time dealt himself with this man Abel. Well, I wanna go to the last one, uh, another very set account in Second Samuel chapter 13. And this has to do with, uh, Absalom's uprising, David's own flesh and blood coming against him and seeking to take over the Kingdom.
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And so we see here in this 13th chapter.
Umm, in verse 23, and it came to pass after two full years, uh, might just mention too that prior to this, David, umm, Absalom had a sister whose name was Tamar, and he had a stepbrother, I guess it would be who took advantage of her and defiled her. And that angered Absalom and he's going to get revenge, but he waits for two years. But it says in verse 23 that after two full years.
Umm, that Absalom had sheep shares in Vail Hazor, which is beside Ephraim. And Absalom invited all the King's sons. And we know the story that Absalom instructed his men that when I tell you to go after Amnon and kill him. And that's what they did. And so this was right at that time that he used this excuse of these sheep shearers to get all the king sons there. But he was after Amnon for.
Have done to his sister. Well, I thought of this first you have corruption on the part of Amnon's part and then the result of that is violence. And isn't that what so characterizes the enemy of this world, the God of this world? Violence and corruption. It's what drives man. And you know, it can be a hindrance to us. Perhaps not.
Carrying on in the same way, but being identified with it, it permeates our society, it permeates the.
The movie world it it it so much is is that's what's behind it is corruption and violence. And we need dear young people and each of us, we need to be on our guard against this. That would rob us of what we have that covering that those things that are ours and would hinder us from being shepherds. So let's just go back real briefly now because our time is up.
And just look at real quickly at, umm, Exodus 34 again.
And look at these features of the Lord Jesus here in verse 11.
Umm, I'll just read them. For thus saith the Lord God. Behold, I even I both search out my sheep and seek them, or it should be 10 them. And so here the Lord, he searches his sheep, and he also tends his sheep, the thought of care and compassion. And then in verse 12, as a shepherd tendeth, it should be his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered, so will I.
Tend my sheep and we'll deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark days. So he delivers them. He tells it tells us that he gathers them in verse 13. I will bring them out from the people and gather them from the countries, and we'll bring them to their own land. So he feeds them to in verse 14. I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall.
Their full be and then it tells us, umm, down in that, uh, 16th verse.
He seeks the loss, he brings them again that have been driven away. He restores the thought of restoring. He brings them again and he binds them up that were broken and he strengthens them that were sick. What wonderful, umm, characteristics of the Lord as a shepherd. And I'm not gonna take the time to develop those. So let's let's think about those for ourselves. Just look at those and think of.
Verses in the New Testament that would bring out these these the way the Lord treats his sheep let's.
Seek to be like him. Let's seek to care for one another in these closing days of this day of grace, to be overcomers, to be deliverers, to be shepherds. And you know, both Paul and Peter speak of have a word to shepherds and and in those both of those words where they say feed Paul, Paul says feed the Church of God and and Peter says.
Feed the the flock of God. Both of those words for feet should be shepherd.
Because shepherding is more than just feeding. We've had food here at this conference, and it's wonderful. But we're gonna go to our own homes and we're gonna go to our own assemblies, and there's ones among us and perhaps ourselves. We all need it. We need shepherding care too, don't we? So we need to follow it up. Not just feed one another, but to shepherd one another.
Let's close the prayer. Our loving God and our Father, we are searched by Thy word.
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And we praise that we might be exercised to walk before the in a way that would enable us to be shepherds to one another, that we would not allow the enemy to come in and take away these things that are ours. We know that our salvation is secure without us desire us to have a a full life.
And one pleasing to thee, and to be a help to our brother, to shepherd them.
We just pray for Thy health now. We just commit ourselves into Thy hands. Look to Thee for the day tomorrow to for Thy pouring out upon us again as a house today. We thank Thee in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.