Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Unlike the other two songs in this series, we don’t actually know who wrote “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead us.”
We know it first showed up in a songbook for children in 1836, and we know a guy named William Bradbury wrote the music for hit.
Bradbury is better known for having written the music for “Jesus Loves Me,” and for being close friends with the guy who wrote the music for “Joy to the World.”
Perhaps in some future version of this sermon series, we will look more closely at their stories.
“One Christmas Eve, Ira D. Sankey was traveling by steamboat up the Delaware River.
Unlike the other two songs in this series, we don’t actually know who wrote “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead us.”
We know it first showed up in a songbook for children in 1836, and we know a guy named William Bradbury wrote the music for hit.
Bradbury is better known for having written the music for “Jesus Loves Me,” and for being close friends with the guy who wrote the music for “Joy to the World.”
Perhaps in some future version of this sermon series, we will look more closely at their stories.
Unlike the other two songs in this series, we don’t actually know who wrote “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead us.”
We know it first showed up in a songbook for children in 1836, and we know a guy named William Bradbury wrote the music for hit.
Bradbury is better known for having written the music for “Jesus Loves Me,” and for being close friends with the guy who wrote the music for “Joy to the World.”
Perhaps in some future version of this sermon series, we will look more closely at their stories.
Unlike the other two songs in this series, we don’t actually know who wrote “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead us.”
We know it first showed up in a songbook for children in 1836, and we know a guy named William Bradbury wrote the music for hit.
Bradbury is better known for having written the music for “Jesus Loves Me,” and for being close friends with the guy who wrote the music for “Joy to the World.”
Perhaps in some future version of this sermon series, we will look more closely at their stories.
But for today, I want to focus less on the origin of our song, and more on its impact.
We may not know who wrote “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us,” but it seems pretty evident which passage they had in mind when they did so.
Jesus called himself The Good Shepherd, and this is a song about Jesus being a good shepherd.
The connection is pretty cut and dry.
In that same passage, Jesus declared that his sheep - by which he meant his followers - would recognize his voice.
And today’s story is about one such sheep doing precisely that.
It’s a story about Ira D. Sankey, the traveling singer and companion of Dwight Moody, and how his life was saved by one of Jesus’ sheep hearing the voice of his shepherd.
“One Christmas Eve, Ira D. Sankey was traveling by steamboat up the Delaware River.
Asked to sing, Mr. Sankey sang the Shepherd Song.
After the song was ended, a man with a rough, weather-beaten face came up to Mr. Sankey and said: “Did you ever serve in the Union Army?”
“Yes,” answered Mr. Sankey, in the spring of 1860.
“Can you remember if you were doing picket duty on a bright, moonlit night in 1862?”
“Yes,” answered Mr. Sankey, very much surprised.
“So did I,” said the stranger, “but I was serving in the Confederate army.
When I saw you standing at your post I said to myself: ‘That fellow will never get away from here alive.’
I raised my musket and took aim.
I was standing in the shadow completely concealed, while the full light of the moon was falling upon you.”
“At that instant,” continued the singing, “ just as a moment ago, you raised your eyes to heaven and began to sing.
Music, especially song, has always had a wonderful power over me, and I took my finger off the trigger.
‘Let him sing his song to the end,’ I said to myself.
‘I can shoot him afterwards.
He’s my victim at all events, and my bullet cannot miss him.’”
The singer continued: “But the song you sang then was the song you sang just now.
I heard the words perfectly:
We are Thine, do Thou befriend us,
Be the guardian of our way.
“Those words stirred up many memories in my heart.
I began to think of my childhood and my God-fearing mother.
She had many, many times sung that song to me.
But she died all too soon, otherwise much in my life would no doubt have been different.
“When you had finished your song it was impossible for me to take aim at you again.
I thought: ‘The Lord who is able to save that man from certain death must surely be great and mighty’ and my arm of its own accord dropped limp at my side.””
-http://www.tanbible.com/tol_sng/sng_saviorlikeashepherdleadus.htm
On that day in the battlefield, two of the Good Shepherd’s sheep stood a few yards apart from one another.
They were from different sheepfolds.
They did not know one another.
But when one of them began to sing, the other recognized… something.
Something that made him stop and listen.
Something that, when the song was over, made him lower his weapon and allow the person opposite him to live.
When Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd, he said all his sheep would know his voice, and there has been debate ever since about what that meant.
What does Jesus’ voice sound like?
How do we know if we’re hearing it?
Is it an audible voice, or a metaphorical voice?
If I don’t think I’ve heard Jesus’ voice, can I call myself one of Jesus’ sheep?
But on that battlefield, the voice of the Good Shepherd came from the mouth of one of his sheep.
Another of his sheep, while from a different sheepfold, chose to stop and listen.
In doing so, he heard the voice of the Good Shepherd, and in that moment two lives were saved.
The voice of the Good Shepherd can be heard many different ways.
But we are most likely to hear it when we set aside our prejudices and assumptions, and choose to truly listen.
Where will the Good Shepherd lead you when you listen to his voice?
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