The Good Shepard

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen. Our beloved Fathers, Deacons, Monks, and Nuns, our beloved congregation, those who are present in this Holy Church, and those who are watching us through live streaming, may the Almighty Jesus Christ of Nazareth bless you, guide you, protect you, and deliver you from every evil tribulation, in Jesus' mighty name, Amen. The Gospel of today is from the Gospel according to Saint John, chapters 9 and 10, and chapter 9, verses 39, all the way till the end of the chapter, and then chapter 10 from 1 to 21.

The Lord is trying to say to every single human being, He's trying to say to every single human being, this is not to the Christians, this is to every human being that has ever come to the face of this earth, and will ever come, we need to understand one thing very clear. Now, whether people accept this, whether people believe in this, whether people confess it, acknowledge it or not, the truth will always be the truth. Now, Jesus Christ is God revealed in the flesh.

Now, what does that mean in a very simple term, where us humans can relate to and comprehend? God means He's the creator of everything and everyone, visible and invisible. So, Jesus Christ is the creator of heaven, angels, every galaxy, everything that came to existence, and everything on this earth, and the crown of this creation, the human race or the human being. Now, in this sense, Jesus Christ came for every human being.

He is not limited to the Christians. Those who believed in Him became Christians, but the Lord is still waiting for the whole world to come back to Him. This is the truth.

The gospel of today is chapter 9 and 10, but I'll take it to 11 as well. Now, the gospel according to Saint John works in three, three lots of chapters, because there is a miracle or a sign that takes up three chapters. The first chapter is an intro, an introduction to the sign.

The second chapter is the sign itself, and the third chapter is the result or the fruits of that sign. Now, when you look at chapter 9, the Lord Jesus has healed someone who was born blind from the mother's womb. The Lord spat on the ground and made mud and applied it to that man's eyes and said, go and wash in that pond called Shiloha or Shiloho, which means messenger.

So, He opens the eyes of the blind man. Chapter 10, I am the good shepherd. I am the good shepherd.

My sheep hear my voice and follow me. They do not follow the voice of the stranger, of a stranger, but they follow the voice of the good shepherd. Chapter 11, the Lord raises Lazarus from the dead.

So, when you put 9, 10 and 11, you come to this truth. And what is that truth? I came to judge. My word will judge those who rejected in the end.

The good shepherd. The good shepherd, as Psalm 23 mentions, he leads me to green pastures and still waters. He leads me to green pastures and still waters.

What is the word? My sheep hear my voice. What precedes the word is the voice. I'm talking to you now, words.

You cannot see the word. The first thing you do or you're able to do is hear the voice of the word. So, the very first thing that comes to our ease is the voice of Christ.

When we hear His voice, accept what we just heard, put it in the depths of our hearts and believe in what we just heard, then the word who is the logos, who is God revealed in the flesh, will come and reveal Himself to you and I. We cannot find God, it is God who finds us. We cannot get to God, it is God who gets to us. We cannot climb up to Him, but He can come down to us.

It is the good shepherd who seeks the lost sheep. It is not the sheep that seeks the shepherd, because the sheep without the shepherd, it is lost and eventually dead. Now, the Lord is saying, my word is the light of the world.

I am the light of the world. This man in chapter nine was born blind from the womb of his mother. Now, this blindness, we can look at it in two different ways, physical and spiritual, but the issue, the physical, when you compare it to the spiritual, is not much, because the Lord did open the eyes of this blind man, physically He did.

However, afterwards, death blinded those eyes once again, the physical eyes. The Lord opened the physical eyes of this blind man, but when he died, the eyes were shut one more time and became absolutely blind again. But there is another blindness which the Lord came for specifically, the spiritual blindness.

The physical blindness is temporal. In fact, there are so many people that came to this world blind, yet they see more than me and you. They know their way, they know exactly where things are, and in fact, they see beyond the temporal realm, because they have an eye that has no limit to its sight, called the spiritual eye.

Yet there are so many people with their eyes opened, yet perceive nothing. They cannot tell their right hand from their left hand. Just being physically with an open eye, that doesn't mean you see.

Just because you see physically, that doesn't mean you really see. Our eyes are opened, yet we do so many things wrong. Our eyes are opened, yet we walk in so many dark alleys.

Our eyes are opened, yet we believe in the lies of the world and follow through with it. Yet our eyes are open and we sell Jesus Christ every single day of our life, yet our eyes, the physical eyes are open, but spiritually we are blind, and as long as we remain spiritually blind, we're dead. We're dead.

The end is the grave, but it's not the temporal grave, it's the permanent death, the separation of the spirit from its creator, God, who is Jesus Christ of Nazareth. All glory to his holy name. The Lord came, opened the eyes of this blind man.

When you look at that story, true story, what happens? This man was blind from the mother's womb. The disciples stopped the Lord and asked him, they said, whose sin is it, the parents or this blind man, for him to be born this way, Lord? He said, neither the parents nor him, but he's been placed here for the glory of God. The Lord makes mud by spitting on the ground.

That is just telling us he is the same God who created Adam, because Adam was made out of mud. The word Adam is edamtha in the original language. Edamtha means red mud.

Dam in Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic means blood. Edamtha means red mud. So God created Adam from mud, that God came in the flesh and he said, I am the same God, out of mud I'll create eyes for this blind man.

But the question, now here we need to really take heed and pay attention. So many people, they search for God with their intellectual capacity, using their heads, using their intellect, they are seeking God, thinking they might find God with their intellect. This man was blind.

Now the Lord Jesus made mud out of mud and applied it to this blind man's eyes. Now if we use our heads, and not only this, then he tells him, the Lord tells him, get up and walk to a pond which is several hundred meters away from where he was sitting. He tells him, go and walk.

And if I use my head, I'll say, what's wrong with you, Jesus? Are you okay? Are you serious, bro? What's up? What's happening? Hello, I'm blind. Anybody home? The Lord will say, yes, I know. So Lord, is this the way you open my eyes? The Lord will say, exactly, yes.

I'm already blind, Lord. So you take mud and stick it on my eyes? He says, yes. Well, thank you very much, Lord.

Even if I had 1% of eyesight, thanks to your mud, it's gone. Now I am 100% blind. The Lord says, exactly, you are, because you are 100% blind.

Now I want you to get up and walk to the pond and wash your face there. If we use our head, our intellectual capacity will lead us to logic. This realm, the ultimate is logic.

The ultimate is the natural realm. Now the logic says, everything the Lord is saying doesn't make sense in my mind, in my head. Everything is contradictive.

But my sheep, hear my voice and follow that voice. Get up and wash your face. I am sure when that blind man walked, people made fun of him.

People have seen him for years sitting on the sideway begging and everybody knew he was blind from birth. They knew him for years. It's a little town.

Everybody knows everybody. So when they saw him all of a sudden after all these years being normal, every single day comes and sits in this spot and begs for help. All of a sudden they see him, his face is all muddy.

They said, poor thing, he is not only blind, now he is a nutcase, a lunatic. He's playing with mud and putting it all over his face. Who does that? A mentally unfit person.

So as he was walking, people ridiculed him. People made fun of him. People maybe told him off, but it did not matter to him because he listened to the voice of the Good Shepherd and he followed through with that voice.

When you hear the Lord's voice and follow through with it, you will see the glory of God. He went and washed, regained his eyesight. When his eyes were opened, the closest people to him denied him.

His own parents, they said, there is something wrong with our son. When they were questioned by the authorities of the Israelite nation, they said, looks like he's lost his mind, his brain. He's been blind for so long.

Now it got to his head. He is acting, behaving, talking like a lunatic. The very parents of this son went against him.

You see, the moment your eyes and our eyes are opened by the Almighty God, the closest people to us will be our enemies. They'll go against you and they'll start calling you names and pointing the finger at you and saying, look at you, shame on you. You think you're a saint, you're nothing.

You think you're something special, you are nothing. Look at you, what a show-off. You're trying to be the best.

Oh, you're praying now. Oh wow, so you're a monk, you're a nun, so the family is nothing. You're the only one who knows Jesus, yes? Are you trying to tell us that you are the best of the best? Shame on you.

They will ridicule you, but you need to follow through with the voice of the Lord. When his eyes were opened, his people rejected him, but someone embraced him, Jesus. The Holy Bible says, and Jesus came where that blind man who regained his sight was.

Jesus found him. When the Lord open your eyes, it is then and then only you will understand who Jesus Christ is, because no one can teach you about the Lord except the Lord. When the church becomes spiritually blind, turns into a worldly institution, connects with the world.

Makes deals with the world. Becomes a place of buying and selling, an enterprise. And then the church gets measured according to how much the church has with wealth, properties, prestige, and power.

Totally lost the mark. Totally lost the mark. The church needs to always listen to the voice of her Good Shepherd.

The moment the church lose track of that voice, the church is blind. When we walk in darkness, we can't see what is coming our way. Everything is hidden.

Everything is absecure. But when the light shines forth, everything falls into clarity. Everything makes sense.

You see, when the Lord opens your eyes, spiritually I'm talking about, when the Lord touches you in the depth of your soul, when he opens your eyes and you start talking, do not be shocked when people misunderstand you. Do not be shocked when people go against you. Do not be shocked when people persecute you.

Do not be shocked when people call you names because their eyes are not open. My beloved, it is not what you know that gives you the insight. It is what God has done for you that gives you that insight.

So many people are educated, not only in the religious field, there are so many scientists, there are so many professors in biology, in chemistry, in physics, yet they are spiritually blind to the core after studying all their life and becoming professors in that field, absolute experts. They come back and speak the ultimate ignorance of all ignorances and say there is no God. So is this the knowledge that you gained, my dear friend, as a scientist, as a professor? Stephen Hawkins, the number one physicist in the world, died in a wheelchair.

The only thing was working in his body was the vocal cords. See how the Lord is mighty. Do you see how Jesus Christ is always in control? The number one physicist in the world tried to find out how the universe came about through physics.

Blind, ignorant, all his knowledge was childish at the end. What did your knowledge do for you? Placed you in a wheelchair, only vocal cords, nothing moves in his body, nothing. And he died still trying to discover through physics how this universe came about.

And he said while he was living in the flesh, I will do everything in my power to find out through physics how this universe came about. I will find and discover it, my dear friend. He wrote it in the grave and he will never find out.

But now I'm sure he did because when he crossed to the other side, he said how blind I was, Lord, all my life. Lord, I denied your existence, but now, which is too late, I found out it is God who created the universe, not a physics formula. Blind, speaking so childish, mother nature created you through a big bang.

And I'll big bang you if you don't wake up to yourself with a red belt in karate, scissor, scissor cut. Oops, got to go back here. The Lord, his voice.

See, I came to open the blindsman eyes, chapter nine. How was I able to do that? Because I am the good shepherd. The Lord said, all those who came before me were robbers and thieves because they did not walk through the door.

They jumped from the fences and the windows, but I'm the only one who walked through the door. And for us not to be seen as thieves, we need to walk through the front door. If we break in, we're thieves.

The Lord never breaks in. He knocks and it's up to us to open the door. See that door, he said there is the gatekeeper or the doorkeeper.

The doorkeeper is the Holy Spirit. The door is the Lord himself. It is the door of prophecies.

It is the door of the word. What is a prophecy? The word of God. What is the word of God? Law.

Law. See, God gave at the beginning two laws and the two you can put them into one. Love God with all of your heart and love your neighbor like yourself.

But during the pandemic, they said, jab yourself and love your neighbor. Forget about God. And this came from church leaders.

Oh, what a feeling, corona. From church leaders, jab yourself and show an act of love for your neighbor. My dear friend, church leader, what about God? What happened? Oh, the church has gone blind, has it? Because they did not wish to listen to the voice of the shepherd, the good shepherd.

They listened to the voice of the enemy, Satan. Blind. It takes God to open your eyes and my eyes as church leaders, not our PhD in theology.

So many educated yet so many lost. Church leaders have PhDs upon PhDs yet blind talking childishly and foolishly because they did not wish to follow the voice of the good shepherd. They remained blind.

All their education led them to one place. Ignorance, foolishness, childish behavior. It takes the Lord.

It takes the Lord. It takes the Lord to bring out of the illiterate wisdom. It takes the Lord to bring out of the weak mightiness.

It takes the Lord to bring out of nothing, everything. It takes the Lord to do that. Not Notre Dame University, Oxford.

They can all get lost and pardon the French, not. My beloved, how can I listen to the voice of the Lord? How can I follow him? The first thing we need to do is acknowledge we are sinners. The first thing, Lord, I come to you today confessing wholeheartedly, I have sinned against you.

I have broken your laws. I have broken your word and your heart. Today, I am coming saying I am nothing and you are everything.

Lord Jesus, I can't get to you. Please, with your infinite mercy, with your infinite grace and love, come to me and lead me to you. You are the good shepherd seeking that lost sheep in the wilderness of this world.

The world current has taken me away from you. I drifted so far and wide. I lost my track.

I can't come back to you, Lord Jesus. Bring me back to you, I beg you, Lord. I've tried it my way for so many years.

I've tried it my way for so long and every time I've done it my way, I failed. I failed. I failed miserably.

Don't do it your way. Let the Lord do it for you. Entrust him with everything you have.

Entrust him with all of you, all of you. Don't leave no portion. Don't ever be greedy when it comes to the Lord Jesus.

Be generous. Give you all to him and say, Lord take me, break me and make me, wound me and heal me. Show me the true me, the real me.

When the Lord takes you in that desert far away and teaches you through his school of thought, when the Lord takes you through his school, not Notre Dame, not Oxford, the school of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. You know, one day Jesus was walking and then John the Baptist said, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Two of his disciples, of John the Baptist's disciples, they followed Jesus.

Since they heard their teacher is acknowledging him being the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, they say, well our teacher is the man of God. He's a prophet. He knows what he's talking about.

Let us go and see where Jesus is and who Jesus is. When the Lord realized they were following him, he stops and look what the Lord says to them. He turns around and says, what can I do for you? What do you want? Why are you following me? You know what they say, what they said? They said, Lord, where do you stay? We want to know where you live, where you live.

Now, the Lord is life. I need to live him. I need to live him.

I need to live him. I've said this so often and I'll say it again. Do we ever think before we breathe? Never.

Do we ever count how many times we breathed in a day? Never. Why don't we think about it? Yet, this is the source of our very life. If I don't breathe, if I stop breathing, I'm dead.

What is dead? I never exist. I'll come into a non-existence, gone, finished, never to be seen. Yet, this very source of my life, I never pay attention to it.

I never think about it. I never count how many times I've breathed. Why? Because it is life and when it comes to life, you can only do one thing with life is live it, not study it, not think about it, not chase it.

You just live it. Christ is your life and my life. Don't study him.

Don't go and say, this professor came and told me this is the meaning of this verse and this is the passage. I send my assignment to get my PhD. Listen, I'll take you to the desert and bring your PhD with you.

Pope, Cardinal, Bishop, bring your PhDs with you. Let's go to the desert and let me see what your PhD is going to do for you. I'm not saying education is not important.

Don't get me wrong, but one thing I'm saying, education without application is a waste of time. You study about the Lord, but you never chose to live with the Lord. You're a total stranger to the Lord.

You cannot lead his flock. You will destroy his flock. You're blind and a blind leading the blinds.

They both fall into the ditch. You need a leader that has eyes that are opened by the Lord, not by himself, by the Lord, by the Lord. Live the Lord.

Every morning you wake up, your eyes are open. My daughter, you're my daughter here. If you're married, your husband is next to you.

You open your eyes. Don't worry about your husband. He's probably hearing what you're saying, but he's pretending that he's asleep.

Naughty boy. You wake up, you open your eyes, you say, good morning, Habibi. He's thinking you're talking to him.

You're talking to the Lord. He is the man. He's the man of all men.

Good morning Habibi, Habibi. Good morning, my love. I thank you for this blessed morning, for a new life, for a fresh start, for a new page, still empty.

Yesterday's page was filled with so many things I was not proud of. Yesterday's page was filled with so many errors that I was ashamed of. Thank you, my man, Jesus.

Thank you, my Lord. Thank you, my dad. Thank you, my father, my mother, my friend.

Thank you. Thank you for giving me another day to give me a new start, a new life, a new page. I can write history once again today.

Help me, Lord. I write everything right. I don't want any more errors.

I don't want any more mistakes. Help me. Good morning.

Thank you for this new day. And then say to him, thank you, Lord, from the bottom of my heart for giving me this husband who's a pain in the neck. I couldn't ask for a better man.

Now you have to sugarcoat it. Now you have to mean it, my daughter. Thank the Lord for that man that he's given you.

He's a blessing even though sometimes he's a pain, but that blessing sometimes can only come through pain. You see, we can't be blessed with good things always. Sometimes we must be blessed through hardships, through pains.

Thank the Lord for what you have. Thank the Lord for the family, regardless what they have done and what they are doing. Pray for them.

Pray for them. Pray for them. Pray for them.

Thank the Lord for that little room. You're living in a granny flat. Thank him.

Don't be sad. Don't be upset and saying, my friend is living in a mansion and I'm living in a little tiny granny flat. Thank the Lord.

Let the Lord make that granny flat a mansion for you. Don't build it with your own hands. Let God build it for you.

For if the Lord does not build a house, it is vanity for the builders to go and build it. If the Lord does not protect a city, it is in vanity for people to stand and protect it. It is God who builds.

It is God who protects. It is God. This God, his name is Jesus Christ of Nazareth forever and ever and evermore.

Glory, honor, worship and thanksgiving to Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The love of my life. The love.

Men be warriors for the Lord. Don't be weak. Love the Lord.

Love the Lord. Love the Lord. Even when he is difficult, love him.

Even when you're praying and he's not answering you, love him. Even when you're asking for something and it goes totally the other way, love him. Love him.

Say something, I'm giving up on you. You naughty boys and girls. Love the Lord.

His voice. In the book of Revelation, John the Beloved says, like many waters. Water soothes.

Water revives. Water comforts. Water cleanses.

Water heals. His voice is like many waters. I'm hurt.

The voice of the Lord comes. All of a sudden, that hurt is gone. I'm feeling down.

I'm uplifted. I'm lost. I'm found.

The voice of the Lord heals, my beloved. Heals. Sit in silence sometimes and contemplate.

Remember. Remember. Remember this.

Every time you come so close to giving up. Every time you come so close to calling it a day. Every time you come so close to say, what's the point of going on? I've had enough.

Remember. Remember this. When I get thrown in the deep and my entire body is submerged underwater.

The only thing that is sticking above water is my head. The enemy comes and laughs at me and says, ha, look at you. You're dead.

You're gone. You're finished. Look at you.

You're so gone. So deep. So far.

Say to the enemy, listen, for as long as my head is above water, I'm still alive and everything is good. Nothing is lost. Nothing is lost.

For as long as my head is above water, I am still living and kicking. And let me tell you, enemy, Saint Paul teaches me in his epistle to the Ephesians chapter five, the church is the body of Christ. You are the church.

You are those souls who are baptized in the name of the father of the son of the Holy Spirit. You are the church. The church is the body of Christ and Christ is the head of this body.

So who is your head and who is my head? Who is our head? Christ. We are the church. We are the body and Christ is the head to this body.

Guess what? Where is our body now? And ascended and sat down at the right hand of the father in the heaven of all heavens. Our head is in the heaven of all heavens. Can anyone, can any power bring the head of Christ underwater? Impossible.

For as long as our head is above water, say to Satan, I'm living. You may have made me fall. You may have made me slip and slide away.

But guess what? My head is Christ and that head lives forever. I receive the breath of life from the head, not the body. I receive oxygen from the head, not the body.

It is my source of life is my head who is Christ Jesus. For as long as he lives, the body lives. Nothing is lost.

Just come back. Come back from Star City Casino and say goodbye and come to the church. Come back from those dark alleys in the city.

Come out of there and come to the light. Come back from wherever you were trying to go and turn away and face the Lord Jesus and say, Lord, I'm coming today broken hearted. I'm coming today fully naked, sinful, absolutely blind.

Open my eyes, oh good shepherd. When he opens your eyes, he raises you from the dead, Lazarus. When he gives you that spiritual insight, the grave cannot contain you anymore.

For you are now living in him, not in you, in him. And as long as you live in him, there is no grave. Lazarus has to come.

He needs to come out of that grave and he must come out of that grave because the grave cannot contain Jesus, therefore cannot contain everyone who believes in him. The grave are for those who rejected the voice of the Logos. That word that saved the repentant soul, the very word will judge those who rejected him.

I did not come to judge, but to save. But today he says, I came to judge because my word is sharper than a double edged sword. Double edged means if you believe in the word, the sword will set you free.

You know, in the good old days where they used to use swords and knives to fight, that sword they used to fight the enemy with and the same sword they used to set free their own soldiers, their own army. When one of your friends is captured, how do you undo, how do you cut those ropes which they've tied him with? By the sword. But the very sword who set you free is the very sword who's going to kill the one who becomes an enemy.

The sword for those who accepted Jesus set them free. The sword is his word. But the sword who is his word for those who rejected him, they will be perished by the sword.

They will be judged. Do not be judged by the Lord, but rather saved by him. Amen.

Let us bow our heads, ask the Lord for forgiveness, and make us worthy to come forth and receive him in the truth in his body and blood. Amen. Our good God and full of mercy, our good God and full of mercy, whose grace and mercy is poured upon all.

Pour my Lord the compassion of the delightfulness of your love upon your servants and again transform them in the hope of renewal to the life of repentance. Renew in them your Holy Spirit by whom they are sealed for the day of salvation. Purify them by your compassion from all flesh and spiritual blemishes and assure the hope of their faith by the aid of your grace and instill the walks of their behavior in the paths of righteousness.

Please them along with the saints in your kingdom by the assurance of the hope of their faith in the adoption as your children and in the joy of your absolving mysteries. Empower them by the aid of your mercies to observe your commandments and fulfill your will to confess worship and praise your holy name, the Lord of all, Father and Son and Holy Spirit forever. Amen.

May the Lord Jesus bless you, bless all your loved ones, give you the strength to carry on and face the currents of the world by the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the one and only. Amen.