Ten shekels and a shirt — a sermon worth hearing

A couple years ago, a friend sent me a link to a sermon entitled “Ten Shekels and a Shirt,” by a pastor/missionary named Paris Reidhead. I was unfamiliar with the sermon or the pastor, but found the message to be very challenging.

This week, I listened to the sermon again, and was challenged afresh over the topic, “why do I serve Christ?”

The audio quality of the message reflects the time period in which it was preached (the mid-60s), but it could well have been addressed to a contemporary audience wrestling with pragmatism in ministry.

I don’t know enough about this ministry to commend all his messages to you, but this message based on Judges 17-18 is certainly worthwhile.

One excerpt:

The question comes then to this, what is the standard of success and by what are we going to judge our lives and our ministry? And the question that you are going to ask yourself, “Is God an end or is He a means?” Our generation is prepared to honor successful choices. As long as a person can get things done or get the job done then our generation is prepared to say well done.

And so we’ve got to ask ourselves at the very outset of our ministry, and our pilgrimage, and our walk, “Are we going to be Levites who serve God for ten shekels and a shirt?”, serve men perhaps in the name of God, rather than God. For though he was a Levite and performed religious activities, he was looking for a place, which would give him recognition, a place which would give him acceptance, a place which would give him security, a place where he could shine in terms of those values which were important to him. His whole business was serving in religious activities, so it had to be a religious job. He was very happy when he found that Micah had an opening. But he had decided that he was worth ten shekels and a shirt, and he was prepared to sell himself to anyone that would give that much. If somebody came along and gave more, he would sell himself to them. But he put a value upon himself and he figured then his religious service and his activities were just a means to an end, and by the same token, God was a means to an end.