Ten Shekels and a Shirt

It has been said that this sermon is one of the most widely heard messages ever preached. People of all ages have been impacted by these words. For years it was distributed on cassette tapes and CDs.  Now it is the most downloaded sermon to be found on the internet. 

When my son Andrew was in high school, while flying to Florida to celebrate his birthday, he sat next to a young man who was headed to a new job in Orlando.  They struck up a conversation that led to an invitation for this new friend to join our family for church and dinner.  When they said good- bye, his new acquaintance handed him a CD which included some Christian music and a sermon that he said had changed his life. 

Nothing was written on the CD and months passed before it was discovered that the sermon was “Ten Shekels and a Shirt,” preached by Paris Reidhead.  The young man never knew that Andrew was the author’s grandson.

One listener, who described “Ten Shekels and a Shirt” as  “a mountain of a sermon,” went on to write “This is quite possibly the most important sermon preached in the twentieth century.  It’s relevancy grows more and more as the years go by.  This sermon should be read in every church in America.  This one sermon changed my life.  I went to church for many years as an unsaved person, not knowing it.  This message changed all that.  It revealed my wicked heart, and absolutely broke me.  It has been years and I can’t get this message out of my heart and head.”

Paris Reidhead’s own words illuminate the origins of this powerful sermon: 

“During a Bethany Fellowship Summer Conference in Bloomington, MN, in the mid-sixties I was preparing to speak at the Tuesday morning Bible hour. Upon returning to my room after breakfast to meditate and pray about the message for that morning hour, I felt strangely impressed that I could not deliver the message that had been prepared for the session. Instead, I felt that there was some other message that was needed which I was to bring. 

After prayer, the message that came to mind was one which I had begun preparation for the ministry at the church in New York City of which I was pastor at that time. My notes were not with me, but were in a file folder in my study. An empty envelope was on the desk in my room, on the back of which I wrote the scripture texts to be used and one or two ideas that came to mind. With the envelope in my Bible marking Judges, Chapter 17, and my self utterly cast upon the Lord, I went to the auditorium where between four and five hundred people waited to hear from the Lord through me. 

I remember praying, “This morning I am utterly cast upon You because I am not really prepared.” In my heart I seemed to hear His response, “Well, is that so bad, already?” (being from New York City, it was given in an idiom I would understand.) 

As I listened to the tape, it dawned on me that it was my voice, but God was speaking through me. I realized that on a Tuesday morning during a summer conference, God had been able to get His message across because of my utter and complete helplessness. Here it is, just as the Lord gave it.”