Blind Shepherds

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

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   Always good to worship the Lord, amen. Hallelujah. Good to have everyone here this morning. Those of you listening, we welcome you to Fire and Grace Church in Auburn, Alabama. Hope you hear something that helps you, amen. Hallelujah. Well, I want everybody to take your Bibles out this morning and turn to Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 56. Now, this church, we believe that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for instruction, for correction. All scripture, that means Old Testament and New Testament. There's some people out there that are anti-Old Testament. I don't understand that cuz uh you know, I wonder what they would have done in the first century when Paul and Peter and the rest of them were preaching out of the Bible and the only Bible that existed was the Old Covenant, amen. The Old Testament. Most of the Old Testament can be found in the New Testament. Uh so, anyway, we won't get on that discussion, but uh this is still the word of God that the prophet Isaiah spoke and um we're going to look at it this morning. Um the title of my message this morning's kind of is changed a little bit, but uh it's called Blind Shepherds. Blind Shepherds. Now, I've talked a lot about this um but not not the same thing this morning, amen. There's some very strong indictments in the word of God in both the Old Testament and the New Testament about leaders uh religious leaders, spiritual leaders, pastors, shepherds. Uh they could profit, sometimes they're called priests they're called, but spiritual leaders, shepherds that are blind, leaders of the blind. Amen. Jesus said that. He said if the blind lead the blind, then both shall fall into the ditch. Right? We may turn to that in a second, but that's in Luke 6. But, you know, and of course Jesus looked at the Pharisees and the Sadducees who were the religious spiritual leaders of Israel at the time. And you know, a lot of people think they were they were all the bad guys. But if you remember correctly, and again we may look at this in just a second, but I'm just kind of giving you an introduction. In Matthew 23, Jesus said to the people, he said a multitude was in front of him, and when he was about to rebuke the Pharisees, he he said, "You know what?" He said, "They sit in Moses' seat, and what they say, listen to them." Why? Because, you know what? The Pharisees and the Sadducees were teaching the scriptures and the truth about Jehovah God, the heavenly Father. All right? They believed the Messiah was coming. Their only problem was they just didn't believe Jesus was the one,

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   even though he's right in front of their faces. But the thing about it, he said, "You know, listen to what they say from the scriptures, but don't do what they do." And he said that, and he said because they're blind leaders of the blind. So, there are, according to the Bible, Old Testament new, there's such things as priests, prophets, pastors, shepherds that are blinded. They're blinded by something, and they're leading people in the wrong direction. And I'm I'm going to tell you, of course Jesus said that, you know, we would have wolves in sheep's clothing come to us, but sometimes it's not that the person is a wolf that might lead us astray. They might actually be a shepherd called of God, anointed of God. They might even be a prophet, called of God or anointed of God, and something has happened and they've allowed something in their lives or they've compromised and that compromise or that pride or whatever has come in and blinded their eyes and now they're blind leaders of the blind. And in most of them really honestly believe that what they're doing is good and that they're leading people in the right way, but God says that they're ignorant and they're leading people in the wrong way. I want to show you what Isaiah said. Now, Isaiah was a true prophet of God who had discernment. And he talked here about watchman and about shepherds. He called them both watchman and shepherds, but Isaiah uh 56, we're going to start reading at verse 10. Here is Isaiah the prophet exposing blind leaders and he didn't mince words here. Here's what he said, verse 10, Isaiah 56:10. He said, "His watchman are blind. They are all ignorant. They are dumb dogs. They cannot bark. Sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough. They are shepherds that cannot understand. They all look to their own way, everyone for his own gain, from his quarter from his little territory. Come you say they, I will fetch wine and we will fill ourselves with strong drink and tomorrow as this day and much more abundant." So, he says here that there are watchman. Now, let me just share this with you. One thing about watchman, if you look that word up, a watchman is somebody who is observing the times and also observing what is coming. A watchman is someone that's called to to to look ahead or that God reveals or shows what's coming. Or we should know from the word of God to be able to look at the word of God

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   and to know the things that are coming and watchmen are supposed to watch those things, be observant of those things, and warn people. Shepherds are supposed to care for the flock and part of caring for the flock is being a watchman. Okay? Nancy just wrote an article about that, kill them with kindness. If you hadn't read that, you ought to read it. It's about this watchman concept. Being a watchman and and and let me just say that truly all Christians are supposed to be watchmen. Okay? But even more so, the shepherds, the pastors, the leaders are supposed to be watching what's going on. We're supposed to be watching, attentive to what the word of God says. And in What's amazing is that this really has a connotation to it about the coming of Jesus Christ and about the judgments that are going to come. Matter of fact, there's warnings in the Bible about prophets and priests and pastors and leaders who who may even see the sword coming but won't blow the trumpet and won't warn the people about what's coming. Those are blind shepherds. Notice what he says here. This is interesting because he says his watchmen are blind. They are all ignorant. They are all dumb dogs. Boy, that's amazing right there. They cannot bark. Let me just say what that means right there. What it What you know, if you've got a dog in your backyard, I think y'all had this experience this weekend. But, you know what? If somebody comes in your yard you've got a dog there, a good dog, a watchdog, right? It's going to bark at this intruder of this stranger to give you a warning, to alert you that something's not right, that there's someone who shouldn't be around here or something. And that's what he's saying here. These These guys are dumb dogs. They're worthless. The word dumb there means not able to speak. They're not able to warn you of danger that's coming. Why? Because they are blind. They've turned their heart from it. They don't want to hear. They all want to be positive. Oh, we can't be negative, brother. No. Just like we talked about last week, it's got to be all Dr. Feelgood Willy Wonka Land, right? Chocolate rivers and candy flowers and everything else. It's what's the way it's got to be, right? And you know what? Let me just say that's why these watered-down, seeker-sensitive, seeker-friendly, lukewarm, compromised, worldly, ashamed of the gospel churches fill up. You know why? Because it's hard to attract children to meat and vegetables when there's a carnival across the street, amen, with a bunch of cotton candy and fun and games.

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   But, let me just say one of them gives you diabetes and one of the one of the symptoms of diabetes is blindness. Neuro- and and and nerve damage and you're not able to feel and you're not able to see and eventually it kills you. That's what happens when you feed on sugar all the time. When everything's got to be sweet and nice and we can't say anything that might be scary or bring fear or bring trepidation. We can't bring any warning. We can't cry out about sin. We can't talk about hell. We've got to make it nice and sweet so the unchurched will come to our church. This concept has destroyed the American church and really what we have in the bunch of these mega churches, they are not they are not filled with sheep, they are filled with goats. Amen. I'm not going to name the particular mega church, but I remember, you know, these mega churches they'll go out and they'll buy land when they're about to build a bigger, you know, place and it'll say future home of such and such church, right? And so one day me and Kevin were were riding out in the country on our way to a job site and I saw this huge field full of goats. And I said, "They'll put a sign out there." Future home of such and such mega church. Because they're goat farms instead of a sheep farm. And sheep are to be looked after by a shepherd and sheep reproduce sheep. Goats reproduce goats. I don't understand a true man of God who doesn't want to see the miracle transformation of goats turning into sheep. And that cannot happen unless you preach the gospel. Amen. That cannot happen unless you preach repentance. If any man what? Be in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation. That means he goes from being a goat to a sheep. That's miraculous, my brother. Right? But he says a new creature all things are passed away. Behold, all things become new. So that means when the goat becomes a sheep, he turns away from all things, old sins, old habits, old ways, and because of that turning away from sin and and letting Jesus come in and wash the sin away, there's a born-again experience and you you're you're born a sheep. YOU'RE DONE WITH GOATHOOD. RIGHT? But for some reason this concept is lost. Let's fill up a church with goats. Let's feed them. You know, a goat will eat anything. Sheep won't.

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