Who’s Voice?

One illustration we had on today’s sermon by Pastor Ben of Hope Church Singapore was about shepherd and sheep. The story goes this way:

A tourist went to a Middle East country and he happened to see some shepherds tending their sheep over the countryside. As he was taking some photo of the scenery, he heard one of the shepherds called to the sheep, “Manna, manna, manna!” [I suppose in Arabic it means, “Come!” but I’m not sure and the spelling could also be incorrect]. After this, a number of sheep breakaway from the group and followed the shepherd. Then another shepherd called the same thing and another group of sheep split from the group and followed as well. Now left with one shepherd, the tourist quickly asked the shepherd to lend him his clothes and turban and tried to imitate him by calling the sheep in Arabic. But not even one followed. So the tourist asked the shepherd “Is there any situation that your sheep followed other people except you?” Only when the sheep is sick, answered the shepherd.

“Only when the sheep is sick!”

There are a lot of voices in this world that are calling our name, a lot of different shepherds --pretending “shepherds”. Through this illustration I come to realize that many times I get spiritually sick and listened to the wrong voices [materialism, self-centeredness, ambitions, etc. which hinders me from my focus to Christ] instead of listening to Jesus who is the good shepherd. I thank God he made me understand. I’ve been running away from Him instead of following Him! All those excuses and everything…

Truly, our physical body gets weak and gets sick if we don’t take the right nourishment. Same with our spirit, it gets weak if we don’t feed it with God’s words which is our bread of life and if we lack constant communication with Him by prayer. God is spirit so we must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Then we will know our shepherd, we will follow the right voice.

Text: John 10:2-5 and 10:14
2 The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. 3 The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice."

14 I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep knows me.