The reason Paul could hang on in Corinth, as long as he hung on, is because he had a theology rooted in the Word of God that says, I've got them.

They're out there. Go preach the gospel. My sheep will hear my voice. They will respond. Believe me, trust me, find them.

By preaching the gospel indiscriminately and calling people everybody, everywhere, to repentance.

I've always been struck by how Paul could walk into a city that didn't want him and stay.

Just keep talking, keep reasoning, keep preaching.

And John Piper shows that it's because he believes something really specific, that Christ

had sheep already there.

They just hadn't heard his voice yet. I'm your host,

Dan Kruver. In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper helps us see how that conviction

fuels bold, patient evangelism. This message was originally delivered at Columbia International University

on Wednesday, February 24, 1999.

Verse 11, the shepherd dies to save his sheep. I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Or verse 14 and 15,

I am the good shepherd.

I know my own and my own know me. As the father knows me and I know the father,

and I lay down my life for the sheep. Now, if you're clicking right now, biblically,

theologically with what I'm saying, there should be kind of calling up from the back of your

Pauline mind a sequence of thought that is identical to what we're finding in John here.

Remember? Let me just put it in John's words, and you'll hear where it comes from in Romans

8. Those whom the father made his own, he gave to the son.

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