Shepherd And Sheep—The Secret To The Abundant Life (Classic Sermon) | Joseph Prince | Gospel Partner
See the abundant life Jesus came to give you become a reality when you take your place as a sheep and rely on Him as your good Shepherd.
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About this episode
You are watching the sermon, Shepherd And Sheep—The Secret To The Abundant Life, preached on Apr 16, 2006 by Joseph Prince.
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God wants you to lack in no area. Now the Lord said this to me. My people have received me as their Savior, but many are still lacking because they do not know me as their shepherd. There’ll be no lack in your life when the Lord is your shepherd. Jesus, how come you’re so worried? It’s my responsibility.
I will not look good if you’re not taken care of. Are you a ship? You qualified to hear his voice? You don’t have to be smart to be blessed by God. Amen. You just need to follow Him because He has all the smartness. He has all the wisdom. As long He’s in front of you, goodness and mercy will hunt you down. What a perspective.
way to face life. Amen. Hallelujah. And we have something fresh from the throne of God and I’m so excited that my concern is that I might really keep you here for the next three hours. Hallelujah. I’m just teasing. Praise the Lord. But it’s really a wonderful time that I had with the Lord in the word where he open up some things and he wants you to know some things.
Church, your father wants you to know something from him. He wants you to believe that he loves you. Not just know it, but believe he loves you. He wants you to see Him especially, especially Jesus. He wants you to see Jesus as your shepherd. Amen of all the pictures that God gives us in the Bible. Alright? The most frequent expression or picture of God is dead of a shepherd and God’s people is dead of a flock.
The most frequently used. Now, the Bible uses a picture of God as the eagle, mother, eagle, or mother hand, and rightly so, but it’s not frequently used the picture of God as master, and we are his servants. That’s true. It’s all true, but it’s not frequently used the picture of God as the master workman and all of us as workman in his vineyard.
It’s all true, but the most utilized metaphor of the Lord or picture of the Lord that God wants us to have, and it’s often used both in the old and the new. It is something that both old and new used often. Amen is dead of the shepherd and the sheep. I think that’s something that we rub ourselves off when we don’t remind ourselves of this relationship. Amen.
You don’t have to worry about faith when you see yourself as a sheep and the Lord is your shepherd. You don’t have worry about faith because faith springs fourth. Amen. The moment you see the Lord as your shepherd, for example, when you go to a copm or a coffee shop, you go to the back, you see a lot of rats.
What do you think of? You don’t think, oh, this uncle in Copam, he owns a lot of rats. You don’t think of rats that way. You don’t think of the keeper of the rats. Amen. But when you see sheep, whether it’s in Australia or New Zealand or Israel, when you see sheep on the hillside, you the shepherd is not too far away. You relate the sheep to the shepherd.
You don’t relate rats to the copia man. Amen. The idea of a sheep has someone protecting them. Watching over them, loving them is a very beautiful thought. And goats can be independent. Goats can go their own way and follow a cliff. And usually goats are proud sheep.
Usually people think of sheep as dumb, alright? They may be dumb, but you know what? They are not proud. Amen. And I’d rather be dumb and have the Lord as my shepherd, and I shall not lack all the days of my life than to be smart and follow a cliff and die smart. Amen. Praise the Lord. And you don’t have to be smart to be blessed by God. Amen.
You just need to follow him because he has all the smartness, he has all the coolness, he has all the wisdom that you and I need. Hallelujah. We just have follow him and as long you know how to follow him, you’ll do fine. Amen.
So the beautiful picture that he gives us is especially on this wonderful resurrection morning reminder of what Jesus has accomplished 2000 years ago, very early in the morning, he rose from the dead. So in Hebrews 13, the Bible says, the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep, there you see it again. Alright? The picture of the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant, not through your efforts but through the blood, make you complete in every good work to do his will working in. Lemme stop here
and say that in this service there is a rain. It is raining inside here. Can you feel it? It’s like spiritually, it’s raining. It’s already raining all over this place. And I’m telling you, people are blessed in this service because I didn’t sense this rain in the first two, but it’s falling.
It’s like I can hear the sound of the abundance of rain. Like the prophet says in the Old Testament, I hear the son of the abundance of rain and God spirit is falling on you. I know some of you’re receiving your miracles already. Thank you Father God. Praise your wonderful name, Lord Jesus. The great shepherd is really pouring in his oil and his wine, amen, binding up our wounds and healing us. Amen.
The picture of healing is tied up with the Lord being our shepherd. In one Peter two, chapter two, verse 24, the famous verse, all of us quote, by his stripes, we are healed. And sometimes we forget the context, but you look at the context, look at the last line by whose stripes you were healed for you were like sheep going straight, but you have now returned to the shepherd.
To the shepherd and overseer of your souls. So the moment you see Jesus as your shepherd, something happens to your body. I believe healing becomes easier when you see him as your shepherd, when you see yourself as his sheep. Amen. And praise be to the Lord. The Lord has all kinds of sheep, but they’re all sheep, all sizes, all shapes. Some of them vary round very cute, but they’re all his sheep. Amen.
When the Lord is your shepherd, you shall not want. And I know that many of you know this passage and therein lies the danger. Alright, your familiarity with the shepherd Psalm, Psalms 23, this Psalm is the, in fact, when people talk about the Bible, they talk about Psalms 23 and it’s so well known that even Hiddens know this Psalm, Psalms 23, and if you don’t watch it, he said the devil’s device is always to try to keep a revelation down, a good revelation down. But when he can and too many voices are preaching that