Egypt
The hum of rolling steel and the steadily clacking rhythm of the wheels passing over the tiny gaps between rails made me drowsy in the warm train compartment. I leaned my head against the dusty glass of the window as the Egyptian countryside rolled by. Far from the noise of modernity, the ride between Cairo and Alexandria felt like a window to the past.
Tiny villages, dry and sandy, came into view for several seconds then passed by. In truth, it was me who was there for a moment, then gone. I was just a momentary visitor to an ancient land and people living much as they had for millennia.
As I lolled in and out of consciousness, my mind kept circling around Chapter 10 of the Gospel of John, which I’d recently read. The passage was very familiar but something in it had caught my attention. It bothered me. Like a nail protruding from a familiar smooth surface, it kept snagging my thoughts. What I kept thinking about was a little phrase that Jesus had included in a critical sentence:
“I must...”
Jesus rarely uttered that phrase. When He did, it concerned something crucial to His mission, something that was necessary to completing Jesus’s mission on earth. It also meant that it was closely tied to the heart of the Father. This was big.
After an early evening stop in an obscure village, as the train slowly pulled away from the platform, gaining speed, I saw something intriguing and lifted my forehead from the glass. A young boy was gathering the last few sheep into a rickety old pen for the night, but there was no gate for him to close. And then, before the scene passed beyond my vision, I saw the boy sit on a post and rest his feet on another post, so that his legs bridged the gap where a gate would have been, blocking the entrance.
That’s when I shot awake — John Chapter 10!
Jesus is speaking about Himself. He says, “I am the Good Shepherd.”
He is the Good Shepherd because He cares for the sheep. He is not like the evil shepherds of Ezekiel who only took care of themselves and did not care for their flocks. Read Ezekiel Chapter 34 for a full description of those evil shepherds and what they failed to do.
Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He leads His sheep to pleasant pastures in the wild. He doesn’t run from danger as a hired hand might, but loves and protects His flock. They are His sheep, and they know Him.
However, Jesus also calls Himself the gate, which had never made much sense to me. How could He be both the shepherd and the gate? And yet this little shepherd boy was both. He was a shepherd as well as a gateway to the sheep. No one could come or go without going through him.
It was likely that the whole community shared that one pen each night and it was his turn to watch everyone’s sheep, including his own. In the mornings family members come and collect their sheep and lead them to pasture for the day. But all the sheep are mixed together. How do you pick out your sheep from all the others? But here’s the thing; you don’t have to. The sheep recognize their shepherd’s voice, and they come to him when he calls.
Just as sheep are meant to leave the safety of the pen and follow their shepherd, so we are meant to step out and follow Christ. Each day is an adventure as we follow and are led by our Good Shepherd.
As helpful as that little village illustration was for me, there was still the raised nail of John 10:16.
Jesus said “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”
For the rest of that train ride, I kept thinking about the significance this has to what it means to follow Jesus as He builds His Kingdom.
Jesus said He must go to the other sheep — but notice the tense He used: I have other sheep, not of this pen. They’re already His, but they’re out there, somewhere else. They are not yet in His care and not yet together as one big flock.
They’re lost.
Jesus said they are His. He promises they will come to Him when He calls them. He says they will be one flock. What’s missing?
Jesus’s voice. To follow Him, they first need to hear Him calling out to them.
What’s remarkable is that all those who believe in Jesus become, through the Holy Spirit, ambassadors for Him: He calls out to His lost sheep through them. Just like He called out to those seven Japanese girls through five-year-old Becky.
The implications of John 10:16 are staggering.
First, because He can go everywhere through His followers, there is nowhere He cannot call His sheep to come to Him. He can get to everyone.
Second, because He said that He already has sheep out there who will respond to His voice when He calls, there is no such thing as a closed country. They simply don’t exist. Even in the darkest places in the world, He has sheep. There are lost people who will hear His voice and respond. This is one of the biggest promises I have ever found in the Bible.
All that’s missing is His voice. If you are directed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, He can call out to His lost sheep through you.
At that point in my life, this was a new idea for me. I’d never heard anyone preach about this passage in terms of missions, so I wondered if I was seeing something that wasn’t really there.
The Good Shepherd was expanding my view of the world and His work in it. For weeks, those verses were stewing in my mind. Surely someone else in the two-thousand-year history of the church had seen this?
Soon after this, my train ride came to an end. I asked God to confirm these thoughts for me, speak to me more on these things if they were true. Then I moved on to the tasks at hand.
Soon, He would speak to me in an unexpected way. Rather, someone unexpected would speak to me on Jesus’s behalf, even though he’d been dead for a long time.
London
It was the layover of layovers for me.
I studied history in college, so a full day between flights in London was a chance to see, in person, many things that I had only read about in books.
It was a few weeks after the train ride in Egypt, so much of what I’d been thinking about was still fresh, but not at the forefront of my mind. Today was a voyage through a thousand years of history and I was excited.
After a few requisite tourist sights, I made my way to Westminster Abbey. Beyond the beauty of the architecture. I was surprised by what I discovered there.
The men and women who made world-changing contributions to their times were laid to rest or had markers there. The Abbey housed a virtual “who’s who” of the last 800 years of British history. Sort of the Arlington National Cemetery of the British Empire.
For me, it was amazing. The tour meandered around the perimeter of the cavernous sanctuary. So many names I recognized from my studies: William Wilberforce, Billy Pitt, Winston Churchill… they were all there. It was like strolling through the corridors of history. The tour finished by sending our group up the center aisle to the front of the church, which held the biggest, most recognizable names.
As we worked our way forward, I could see one enormous plaque toward the front. I was trying to guess whose it was. There were a lot of potentials in my mind, but as we walked, more and more of the prominent figures were checked off my mental list. Who was left? Arthur? No, he was mostly a legend.
By the time we started toward that plaque at the front, I was out of ideas. “Who in the world could this be?” I wondered. I couldn’t think of any more kings, queens, heroes, or politicians who could have made more of an impact than the ones I’d already seen. Who was left?
At the end of the tour, I walked up to the large stone with the brass letters and received the revelation I’d been anticipating. The marker read:
Brought by faithful hands over land and sea here rests David Livingstone: missionary, traveler philanthropist, born March 19, 1813 at Blantyre, Lanarkshire, died May 1, 1873 at Chitambo’s Village, Ulala. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, to abolish the desolating slave trade of Central Africa, where with his last words he wrote, “All I can add in my solitude is, may Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one: American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world.”
This stopped me in my tracks. I had been in a political history mode, and it had never occurred to me that this prominent world-changer might have had his place here because he loved Jesus and followed Him to call out to a world of lost sheep. All that history and I hadn’t even considered the work that Jesus had been doing.
There were also some inscriptions up the side of the marker. One was in Latin, the other, in English.
It said:
"Other sheep I have, which are not of this Fold:
Them also I must bring, and they shall hear My Voice." John 10:16
And there, I began to weep.
My fellow tourists must have thought, “Hey buddy, you’re a little late — you missed the funeral by 150 years.”
But it was the immediate connection with the things I’d been thinking and praying about. I wasn’t the only one to see the significance of Jesus’s words in John 10. David Livingstone had seen the same significance one hundred years before I was born, and it motivated him to follow Jesus to the heart of Africa, known then as missionaries’ graveyard.
If you’re not familiar with David Livingstone’s story, it’s worthy of your time. Like us, he was flawed, but he was deeply motivated to end the horrific and desolating slave trade in Africa.
But Livingstone knew that the only enduring basis for the dignity of all people is based squarely on the person and sacrifice of Jesus. The gospel had to get there first. He left a very comfortable life in 19th century England to follow the Good Shepherd to call out for sheep who were lost in a distant land.
Livingstone himself didn’t win many to Christ, but he made critical inroads into the heart of Africa and into the hearts of key Africans. Soon many more voices would proclaim the good news.
At that time, many did not believe that the African peoples would respond to the gospel. But today, more than one hundred million followers of Jesus trace their spiritual heritage to the missionary efforts of David Livingstone and the voices of those early Christ-following Africans.
They heard the voice of the Good Shepherd, and they, too, followed Him.
Livingstone saw it. Jesus said that the world was full of His lost sheep who will respond to His voice when they hear Him calling out to them.
This was a huge moment for me. If all this is true, then everywhere, people will respond to the gospel. He is calling all of us who follow Him, to surrender our plans, and even our very lives to Him. He wants to live through us. He wants us to be His hands, His feet, and His voice to His lost sheep.
Following Jesus is often referred to as “walking with Jesus.” Have you and I ever considered that if we are going to walk with Jesus, we must walk with Him where He is going? Jesus told us repeatedly where He is going. He said, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”
Following Jesus means that I follow the Good Shepherd and that I share His heart and His imperative to call out to and bring home the lost sheep who are not of this sheep pen.
My belief that there are no closed countries and that there are lost people ready to respond when they hear His Voice had already been put to the test. Put to the test in a place which, at that time, many believed to be closed and impenetrable. Sealed off behind a hostile, iron curtain.