Pastors

1 Peter chapter 5, which is hard to believe in some ways, if you've been with us a while. In 1 Peter 5, verses 1-4, Peter writes, So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion but willingly as God would have you not for shameful gain but eagerly not domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock and when the chief shepherd appears you will receive the unfading crown of glory you may be seated very grateful to the men for leading worship. It's very nice to sit with my family and in fact after the weekend I had it was nice to just not have as much to do up to this point.

And this is an interesting passage because I've always thought it's difficult for the man preaching to in some respect preach anything that that can be construed as self-serving. And I remember I went to a church a while ago, and the pastor, he was a humble guy, and he almost refused, though, to ever preach about money. And one of the reasons is he wanted to never be seen to be like some of the guys that that's all they do is preach about money. and I remember disagreeing and thinking we're supposed to give people the whole counsel of God and so if you're in the seat and I say something from the word of God today and your thought is well that sounds awful self-serving since he's the pastor then if that's the kind of person you think I am I shouldn't be up here preaching at all in the first place and so I'm going to in my opinion I think boldly try to tell you what I think the scripture says in its indicatives and imperatives in this section and we're going to let the Holy Spirit deal with all of our hearts whether it makes sense or not and so with that being said Peter is the apostle and anyone who has read through the gospels knows that he had a very very special place in his relationship with Jesus Christ he was basically the leader of the 12 and he was part of an inner circle of the 12 if you if you look at the 12 apostles there was there were four that got to do a lot more things with Jesus in close connection Peter and his brother Andrew and then James and John the sons of thunder and so Peter is very close to Jesus Christ he's the one who the Catholic Church and not the Catholic Church like Bert read about earlier the universal church but the Roman Catholic Church has declared to be the first hope and so the first thing I just want to kind of get out of the way I don't want this to become a whole sermon about Catholicism but that Peter says he's a fellow elder, a fellow presbyteros with the rest of the elders of the church at the time.

He doesn't come in with any type of ecclesiastical authority as if to say, hey, by the way, Jesus said, I'm Peter and on this rock I built my church, so you better listen to me because of my authority as the Pope. In fact, he doesn't even refer to his apostolic authority, which actually existed at the time, and he had special authority because of that. Peter simply appeals to the elders of the churches where he is writing his letter, just as a fellow elder.

And there's something there for us to understand in his humility. And we'll look in a minute about why Peter may have had as much humility as he was able to garner, and it was the result of his failure to remain faithful. after his profession that he'd never denied Jesus Christ. But so first and foremost, this section of scripture is really written, it's about elders.

And in this church, we will use the term elder, and we will use the term pastor, and we will use them interchangeably. That is not the case in every church in the United States. In fact, you could use the word bishop. And if you wanted to use the word bishop, because that's the word here in Greek, and episkopos is the other word, the overseer. There's different words that are used in Scripture, and people have made distinctions because of those different words that we don't believe exist in reality.

It's the same function. So in this church, we say elder, or we would say pastor. Depending on where you happen to be or what we're talking about, you may be thinking a different function at the time. And pastors have a function, and elders implies a bit of a different function at times, just because the words actually meant something different. And we'll look at that a little bit.

But what I want to do is I want to look at what is an elder? Peter says, I exhort the elders among you. It's implied here that there was churches, first of all. and I think a lot of people get confused on this point because there isn't a verse in the New Testament that says thou shalt join a local church there no verse that says you know hey make sure your name is on a list somewhere You know it not explicitly stated literally like that But what you see throughout the New Testament but particularly right here, it's utterly assumed by Peter that there are local gatherings of believers in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia where he's writing these letters to, and these local gatherings have overseers. they have people that are called elders and if you want to get into it I know some of you guys are really into all this Greek stuff now and I am too you have your presbyteros, you have your elders you have your episkopos and those are your overseers so when you get into your Greek you've got scope, right? the word scope, that means to look at something so an overseer is an episkopos right? and so you guys know what words we get right? we get presbyterian and we get Episcopalian.

Those are where those words come from, from these Greek words. And when you look at how Presbyterian churches and groups of Presbyterian churches run themselves, you see kind of where they took these words to maybe, you know, they use them a little differently than we would. A Presbyterian church would have what's called a Presbyterian that's actually over it.

I'll call it Catholic light, And if anybody wants to get mad at me on the internet, that's fine. But Presbyterians and Episcopalians, they're just using these Greek words. And they transliterated them and they made them mean something to them. And I understand how they get some of what they got. But the other word for pastor in scripture is poemon. And that word actually means shepherd.

And so you get a lot of the ideas of what the functions of pastors are. And so for the most part, when we talk about pastors, we talk about them in two ways. We talk about the qualifications to be a pastor. And I'll remind you, if I start to say the word elder, I just mean pastor. And I probably won't use the word bishop. T.D.

Jakes kind of ruined that word for me. And growing up Catholic, that word was ruined for me anyway. but I usually say words like pastor or elder kind of interchangeably and a lot of times I'll use it in my intended thought of it when I'm thinking about a person that's in a sense ruling the church and overseeing the church I say elder more and when I think about the guy who's shepherding people I might say pastor more and so I use them interchangeably but you define pastors and elders by their function and by their qualification in general. And so turn to 1 Timothy chapter 3.

We're just going to start at the beginning. So right after Paul is explaining to Timothy how they're supposed to act in the church and what women are supposed to be like in the church, he says, the saying is trustworthy if anyone desires or aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

Not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. for if someone does not know how to manage his own household how will he care for God's church he must not be a recent convert or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil moreover he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace into the snare of the devil and so what you have here is you have this long list of what we call the qualifications for pastors. The heading in the ESV says qualifications for overseers.

And I hope as you read a list like that, in your own personal life, as a man, in particular in the church, but even as a Christian woman, that you're able to ask yourself, do I even have these virtues? Because these virtues that are explained here are not necessarily things that pastors are supposed to have and the rest of the people aren't. It's not like Superman has the ability to blow things and make them cold and he can see through walls and he can fly and everybody else just relies on him to take care of things.

The pastor is just another Christian. And yet God sets aside some people to do that work and they are to have certain qualifications so that they can actually perform the functions that are necessary. And so I want you to always think of yourself as someone who should be striving for the same virtues. These aren't unique virtues that only pastors should have.

Everybody in the church, and I would say particularly men, there are certain things that don't apply to women as much maybe. and there may be a corollary concept for women to think through. If men are to manage their own household, women aren't expected to do that, but you have a different role in the house, and you should do that well. And so I want you to think about things that way, but I also want you to get this idea here that pastors are being asked to live at a very high standard, and it takes some work to get to that point.

If you're a Christian like I am, I didn't get saved and then the next day meet these qualifications. I didn't know what they were. There guys that spend years aspiring to this office And so that worth thinking about But so there your list and I have a booklet I want you to take I'll just do this now. This booklet I have here called Biblical Elders and Deacons by Nehemiah Cox.

He's one of the men who wrote the Confession. and in fact if you want to learn Baptist covenant theology this is who we will tell you to read, Nehemiah Cox our church basically believes what this guy wrote and this little chapel library booklet it's 31 pages and it describes pastors and deacons and it is my opinion that every man who joins this church should be able to decide if they are aspiring to be an elder or a pastor. They should be able to decide if they would like to be a deacon. And they should be able to explain why or why not if they're not going to be one.

And if you simply don't feel qualified, you should actually be striving for the qualifications. And so I want everybody, I've got about 12 of these. I want everybody who's a church member, it's like a homework assignment, I want you to read it. And anybody else can take it too. But we are looking for elders and deacons right now. And I'm afraid, actually, at this moment, that we might not know what we're looking for.

Some of us may know what we don't want because of a previous experience, you know, or a bad example we've seen on TV or maybe, you know, even at our own former church. But I want us to make sure we know what the Bible tells us we should be looking for so that whether God raises up elders and deacons from within our membership or whether we find people from without somehow, that we know exactly what we want. And we are ready to, if a man should appear, that we're ready to interview him and give him one of these offices if it's God's will.

And so I'll give you these afterwards. I'll put it back down now. So it's a very serious task. and turn back to 1 Peter. Let's look at what Peter tells him. He says, I exhort the elders among you. He uses plural.

It's implied here we have plurality of elders. Many of us used to go to churches where there was a one pastor deal. And that was very unhealthy. it was very unhealthy to have one person who was overseeing in that sense and often times ended up overworked and so that's when you end up in a lot of churches where you just end up with a board of deacons that function like elders and they call themselves deacons and we call them elder cons when we're joking around but then you get a mixture of people that really aren't qualified to be elders but maybe they are qualified to be deacons but then they're actually functioning as elders and you have a problem.

You get some churches where the women of the church really just run the show. And the men don't stand up and do the things they ought to do. And the men who say that they're the leaders, they're really just doing what the ladies tell them to do. And strings are being pulled somehow or other. And you really have a female-run church, which is not the way the Bible describes it. the bible wants men to stand up and men to do the work of leading homes and churches this is one of the reasons why if you notice today we had a a whole train of men that got up and helped lead the worship in fact every every male member of our church i think participated today right yeah is that right and and as soon as any other man joins this church it'll be one of the first things we try to do is get him active reading scripture reading the confession praying doing different things to hone his skills because I don't know maybe one of you is an elder one of the fun things I do is when I look at the kids running around I think he might be my pastor one day because to me that's who I want I want a kid that gets grown up in this church and becomes an adult male and says I want to serve God and his people in this way.

And they may do it other ways. Maybe missionaries or maybe he'll do secular work and he'll do it to the glory of God. That's okay too. But that's our hope. But in 1 Peter 5, Peter says I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder. He communes with them.

He has humility as a fellow elder. He says in a witness of the sufferings of Christ. Peter saw what Christ suffered. he says, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Peter is relating with his fellow believers. I'm a fellow believer like you. I'm in the covenant of grace because Jesus put me in there, and I'm saved by grace just like you.

He's relating to people on their level in a way to let them know, hey, I don't have any superpowers. Peter preached what some people could argue other than the things that came out of Jesus' mouth was the greatest sermon ever preached at Pentecost Pentecost is a really neat day Pentecostals have destroyed it for us because we don't like to make a big deal out of it because Pentecostals have totally screwed up with it Pentecost is an extremely special day and thousands of souls heard Peter preach Christ crucified and risen from the dead and got saved that day and they were added to the church. And Peter was a big man around these parts and after he denied Christ three times and then after he was forgiven and repented for that, Peter had a boldness that probably a lot of these other guys didn have He wasn going to do that again God would be very kind to us if he would give us the boldness of Peter without the humiliation that Peter had to go through.

Peter went through that so that people like you and people like I am can stand up and actually try to stand for God without having to fall first. So we see what it was like for him. But so Peter saw the sufferings of Christ. He himself will eventually suffer for Christ. And when he tells them, he says, Shepherd the flock of God that is among you. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

The temptation is to shepherd the people that aren't among you. The people among you are the hard ones sometimes. You guys are pretty easy right now, but I'll give you time. But you know, one of the temptations in 2021 is to be an internet pastor. People all over the country who don't like their church, and some of them legitimately are going to some bad churches, and they might email me or message me, and they want to talk to me on the phone.

And sometimes they're very flattering. you know, oh, we heard you online, we think you're a really good guy, we saw your video. It's tempting to want to help people that you really care about. You care about them, I love people. And yet Peter's telling them, shepherd the flock of God that is among you. He understands the temptation that men are going to face to go and be praised by other men and to do the work that's a little bit easier than actually showing up and working with the people that are among you. and there's a lot of men today who get really wrapped up in the whole internet thing and go in different places like you know this weekend I was gone preaching at another church and I came back I was telling Jason I said I'd like to do kind of like what they did they had a little retreat it was fun but there's a temptation to try to be a shepherd of someone else.

To try to shepherd a flock that's not yours. If you turn to John 21, let's look a little bit at what Jesus' commission to Peter was. If my memory serves me correctly, we would have gone through this text in early August when we actually started 1 Peter. Because we did like a biography of who is this Peter guy. and this is a defining moment for Peter after telling Jesus Christ he will never deny him John 21 15 Peter tells Jesus I'll never deny you earlier on Jesus says you'll deny me three times Peter says no never right and then and then he does and it's poignant to remember that it's not like Peter was being held at gunpoint Okay, this, this, does anybody remember who he denied Jesus to?

One of them was just a little girl, right? A little girl said, weren't you with him? And one of the boldest men who ever lived, once he repented of this sin, said, oh no, I don't know the man. He even uttered a curse on one of them. apart from the grace of God empowering us with courage we're all cowards but when they finish breakfast so they're on the shore and Jesus just gave them this big catch of fish and Jesus says to them Simon son of John do you love me more than these and he said to them yes Lord you know that I love you and Jesus says to them feed my lambs and Jason prayed about eating the food you're given remember that's what I'm doing I'm feeding you now and Jesus said to Peter a second time Simon son of John do you love me and he said yes Lord you know that I love you and he said tend my sheep so it's interesting the first one he said to feed him and the second one he says tend my sheep that's actually the same word in verse 16 that Peter uses later when he says shepherd the flock of God that is among you He's telling them, tend the sheep.

Peter is just telling the other elders, hey, you need to do what I was commissioned to do. I'm not the Pope. I'm not the Presbyterian. I'm just a fellow elder. And when persecution comes, and when difficulty comes, and when affliction comes, and when the people in your church start coming up against you even at times, and when there's divisions and splits because of people having political differences about masks and all the weird things that could happen now even, you have to shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

I think the average pastor, they say, leaves his congregation in two and a half years or something like that. There's probably some people that don't last long that make that number a little low, but I think we need more commitment. This is a hard calling. This is a very hard calling. It's sobering. but it was predicted that we'd have bad pastors turn to Ezekiel 34 you can read this whole chapter yourself I'm going to sample some verses for you just to tell you that God has always known what's going on and God has always hated bad leaders in this church and so this is one of the reasons why you need to understand the scripture because you need to be able to know whether the person standing in front of you is actually preaching God's word.

You need to be able to stand up and say, I think he was wrong about that and we need to be able to talk about it. Or I think he contradicted the confession or he contradicted scripture. able to have these conversations. And when you end up in a church where the whole thing is based on one guy's personality and one guy being the powerful one, that's how you end up with all these things that we eventually call cults.

Or they just totally dissolve and fall apart and people are left hurting all over like what happened in Seattle with Mark Driscoll. Mark Driscoll preached a lot of good stuff, actually. but he was a horrible human being and he abused people because of his heavy handedness as a pastor and nobody stood up against it the men of the church didn't stand up and say this isn't pastoring this is something else, nobody did it until it was too late and thousands of people are left churchless and hurt some of them never to return to the faith in Ezekiel 34 we have some very sobering things told so verses 2-5 Son of man prophesy against the shepherds of Israel and say to them even to the shepherds thus says Yahweh God ah shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves should not shepherds feed the sheep? can you imagine? not feeding the sheep you're not much of a shepherd if you let the sheep starve and you're eating right? he says you eat the fat you clothe yourselves with the wool you slaughter the fat ones but you do not feed the sheep the weak you have not strengthened the sick you have not healed the injured you have not bound up the strayed you have not brought back the lost you have not sought and with force and harshness you have ruled them so they were scattered because there was no shepherd bad shepherds like no shepherd the sheep have no hope what happened then? they became food for all the wild beasts Paul warns the Ephesians wolves are going to come in not sparing the flock he says that in Acts 20 to the elders wolves are going to come in elders are supposed to be the ones that protect the sheep from the wolves elders are supposed to help the injured ones and help the ones that have strayed and this isn't talking about physical stuff this is talking about spiritual needs one of the ways that you can grieve your pastor is by expecting him to basically be your doctor your therapist, your grocery getter when you don't feel good the one that helps make sure you have a meal train when something happens that's how you can really grieve a man whose job it is to care for your spiritual health and one of the reasons why we have a book called Biblical Elders and Deacons I want you to read is because we need to understand that there are other people in the church responsible for the physical needs of the body and pastors all over this country good ones, some of them are getting burnt out because they're being asked to do 40% of the things in their week that aren't their responsibility in Acts chapter 6 the very first deacons were created in the church simply because Peter said, we don't have time to be setting tables for widows. I'm supposed to be praying and studying the word so I can preach it.

So we're going to appoint seven men of good repute so that they can do this work that, you know, let's face it, literally anyone could do. I mean, being a deacon is a great thing. If you become one, I'll be extremely grateful for you and you get double honor. And that's wonderful. But at the end of the day, being a deacon doesn't take a lot of special gifting.

It just means you wake up and you just work hard for your church. You see something broke, you fix it. You see somebody that's struggling, you find out if they need help. Somebody has a baby, you or your wife, somebody, make a meal train. Let the pastor study and pray. Let's continue in Ezekiel 34, verse 10 and 11.

Thus says the Lord God, or I think it's thus says the Lord Yahweh, one always confuses me with the Yahweh thing behold I am against the shepherds and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves this really bothers him shepherds feeding themselves and not other people I will rescue my sheep from their mouths that they may not be food for them for thus says the Lord Yahweh behold I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out now here you have some good promises that we're really grateful for despite the worthlessness of a lot of people that have called themselves shepherds in God's kingdom God still seeks out his people some of you are evidence of that some of you were completely lost without any shepherd in your life some of you were going to a church and a pastor helped you out and things like that but some of us we were just out in the middle of nowhere that God sought us and brought us in. Verses 14 and 15, just to survey. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land.

There they shall lie down in good grazing land. Remind you of Psalm 23 a little bit, the verse about the shepherd making his sheep lie down, right? And on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord Yahweh. So you have this picture that God is saying, I'm going to be their shepherd.

So now it gets kind of interesting because Peter's calling these other guys shepherds. But God says he's the shepherd. Let's keep looking here. Verse 23. I will rescue my flock. They shall no longer be a prey.

And I will judge between sheep and sheep. and I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David and he shall feed them he shall feed them and be their shepherd Now anybody knows any biblical history Who came first David or Ezekiel Can't hear you. David came first? So David's dead. And yet God says, My servant David's going to feed them. He says, and I, Yahweh, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them.

I am Yahweh, I have spoken. Will you tell me how is David going to be the shepherd of the sheep? I can rephrase it. What if you're a biblical literalist and you have no choice but to believe that David is the shepherd? You can't do it, right? Who's God talking about here?

Thank you. Thank you. Waiting for someone. Yes. That's good. I appreciate that too.

Yes, Jesus is the greater David. God's not going to bring David back. Peter even announces this at Pentecost. When he talks about David still being in the grave. David. Is Jesus here.

Jesus is the chief shepherd. He's the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. He's the one that makes you lay down on green pastures and leads you beside still waters. He's the one that's with you when you walk through the valley in the shadow of death so you will fear no evil because he's with you. He's the one that anoints your head with oil and you're the person whose cup runs over because his grace just spills out on you nonstop because of Jesus, not because of David.

David's dead. Well, he's alive now with God. You know what I mean, his physical body. It's all about Jesus. It always was about Jesus. And Peter knows this.

And Peter tells these guys, you've got to be shepherds. In verse 30, he says, And they shall know that I am Yahweh their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people. And you are my sheep, he says, human sheep of my pasture. And I am your God, declares Yahweh God. So, you know, in case somebody was going to get super literal, he says, you're human sheep.

Like, if you're that... I mean, he's almost been a little bit insulting. Like if you're actually that stupid, like I'm talking about people here. He says, I'm Yahweh, your God. You're the sheep of my pasture, says in Psalm 100, verse 3. In Psalm 119, 176, it says, seek your servant.

I'm like a lost sheep, but seek me and find me. This is the promise of God. I think I wrote the wrong verse here. Oh, yeah. so what does the shepherd feed I did write the wrong verse so what is the shepherd supposed to feed people he feeds them the word of God that's what you need alright you guys can go in there and you can eat dinner at 5 o'clock or whatever that's fine but when we're in here you're going to eat on the word of God how sweet is your word to my taste sweeter than honey to my mouth right and then following that verse that we all know like oh sweeter than honey is your word he says through your precepts i get understanding therefore i hate every false way your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path that's psalm 119 103 to 105 the you don't know this it's the verse that's written wrong on my notes so i that's why i was confused for a minute.

So the shepherd warns the sheep and he feeds them the good food. He's not like the shepherds feeding themselves in the book of Jude who are like waterless clouds, completely unhelpful. Jude chapter 1, there's one chapter, but verse 12. The shepherd feeds the sheep. He cares about them. And he spends his time preparing to feed the sheep.

And what does He gives them God's word. And this is why some of you are here right now. Some of you are here right now because you went to another church with a lot of really nice people. And some of them may have even been born again. And maybe you still think they are, even if it's a bad church. But what happened was, is you went to church, and you came home and you were still hungry, you realized.

And you did the equivalent of waking up and on Sunday morning just eating junk food. And it wasn't your fault. It was your shepherd's job to feed you. And you ate junk food. and Lord willing hopefully you come here and you feel like you're drinking from a fire hose of scripture honestly I hope you leave here thinking I need notes I need to read, relisten I want to overwhelm you with the cornucopia of all of God's goodness that he has given us so that you just feast on it and one of the amazing things to me is how many times after preaching people come up and talk to me well actually what's amazing is how few people actually come up and say something so there's something for you like encourage the guy a little more once in a while.

And some of you do a good job of that. And there's actually a whole sermon I have about why men should be saying amen throughout the sermon at different times actually to encourage the rest of the congregation. But different story. People come up to me and they'll say, oh yeah, there was this thing you said that really affected me. And then another person says it was a different thing.

And sometimes it's not even a point I thought I was trying to make. It was the scripture. The scripture we read together. When you turned in your Bible while I was turning in my Bible and God the Holy Spirit did something in your heart and in your life through that. And so that's why we open the scripture. That's why I don't have a PowerPoint.

I know I can do PowerPoint. That's not the hard part for me. Because you don't need PowerPoint. You don't need my four bullet points of how I think you can have a better life. I have them. When we're not in this room, I can talk to you about all sorts of practical little ideas.

I can give a TED Talk if you want it on something. we're here to hear from God the expectation is that I spend my time throughout the week sometimes weeks in advance even and I praying and you praying for me Maybe it not me I making it personal right now and you praying for me And I'm studying the scripture, and I'm reading the things that other men have said, and I'm comparing what I'm reading to our confession, and I'm talking about it, even with some of you sometimes throughout the week, about the things that are going on. And my wife's cooking all my meals so that I have time to do that stuff, and my boys are perfectly well behaved. And some of you guys are thinking, hey, I want to see how I can help them, how I can support them in different ways, so that when I show up here on Sunday, I'm so filled with all of the knowledge and all of the goodness and all of the understanding that the scripture I could take in that time.

And I've tried to live a holy life and I've tried to repent of sin, so when I stand here, I'm not disqualified right in front of you. and then I just tell you what I think it says and I try to stick to what it says in the scripture to interpret itself for you. Half the time I feel like I just read you a bunch of verses and people have great sermons. I'm like, I just read, literally read somebody else's writing.

That's what it is. What impacts you, it's not a verb, but I used this one. What impacts you is God, not me. And I know I get excited and I yell sometimes and all that stuff and I think that's part of being a preacher, but that's not what should be the impact on you. What should be the impact is, wow, what a great God we serve. And when I'm finished, you should be ready to worship.

You should be worshiping as I preach. And you should be repenting. And if tomorrow God takes me out, nothing should change except a different guy gets up and tries to do the same thing. And he might have a different personality, and you might know him differently, and that's okay. That'll happen. And one day we'll have a rotation, more elder, you know, and that's what we want.

My hope is that we just get to the point where we've got so many guys that are gifted and love preaching that we say we've got to plant more churches. There's not enough time to preach. That's what I want. I'm afraid that some of you, I won't be part of the plant that we go to. Some of you I'll miss. I won't see as much.

But that's what we want. We want to spread this message. So Peter tells the pastors a few things. He says they're to exercise oversight. They're not rulers like the Gentiles have, people that lord things over them. alright if you we're not going to have time for this but if you go through Matthew 23 Jesus Jesus rebukes the leaders of Israel and he even tells the Israelites he says they sit in the seat of Moses and he says so listen to what they say he tells them but don't don't do what they do that's how he starts the whole chapter and he tells them the greatest among you will be your servant and whoever humbles himself will be exalted and whoever exalts himself will be humbled.

Around verse 12 of chapter 23 of Matthew. And then the whole rest of the chapter, Jesus basically says, Cursed are you for all these reasons to the leaders of Israel. And so there's pressure. It's scary to stand up here. You tremble before a holy God when you do these kinds of things. So read Matthew 23 on your own.

You'll see how important this is. Peter says, don't do it under compulsion. He says, but willingly. The first qualification to be a pastor is a desire. Now some people think that's the only qualification. That's a different problem in our churches right now.

People stand up and say, well, God called me to be a pastor. And nobody in the whole church thinks the guy means half the qualifications. But he says, well, God told me, so I've got to do it. no the internal desire for it is the first thing that actually tells you that you should do it and then it's the confirmation of the local church and particularly as Baptists who believe in local church autonomy we believe that local churches ordain pastors we believe that we can ordain anyone we want from in here as long as he's a he husband and one wife is a pretty tough one to get by.

But you've got to interpret what these things mean. If you're one of these people that thinks you have to be married to be a pastor, well, what are you going to do, fire a guy if his wife dies? It's a little hairy if you don't think through these things. But yeah, we can bring a guy in tomorrow from some other city who has never been to seminary, and we can evaluate them and say, we think that you're qualified to be an elder at this church.

I actually had lunch with a guy Friday. Mentioned to him that we're looking for elders. And I said, do you know anybody? Because he's in seminary. And he raised his hand. He's like, well, I want to be one.

We talked about it for like the next hour. And I love this brother. I sincerely hope this guy gets to be a pastor at the church he's at right now. but man if he called me and you know who I'm talking about Gavin PJ yeah Gavin knows him I would love for this guy to call me and say yeah you know what things aren't working out here for providential reasons but would you guys evaluate me yeah Peter didn't go to seminary remember what they said about the apostles when they preached the gospel what did they call them uneducated men unlearned men right we've created all these additional qualifications to make someone a pastor.

And all we've really done is follow the wisdom of the world. And I'm not saying, I don't have anything against getting educated. There's a bunch of us trying to learn Greek right now. That's great. But we can't make extra qualifications beyond what God has made. And seminaries don't train people to be pastors in my opinion.

Churches do. Not for shameful gain. He shouldn't be a lover of money. Right? unfortunately in our culture right now being a pastor can be extremely profitable for people who are bad ones There literally buildings around this country right now that I would refuse to call a church where men are making money hand over fist. Some of them are women making money hand over fist, calling themselves a pastor because it's basically a job they do.

And there's huge batches of people that pay them to do it. And then all over the country there's men who are striving to be humble, trying to love a wife and family and a church, and they're hardly being supported for it. It's the responsibility of the church to free the elders of secular worries. That's chapter 26, paragraph 9. It's the responsibility of the church to take care of the pastor so that he can actually be hospitable.

A guy might like hospitality and not have a place to invite people in or enough money to buy food to feed people. If he's your pastor, that's your fault. And most pastors are going to be way too shy to say, hey, I need a little more. And what's going to happen is he's going to suffer, his wife's going to suffer, his kids are going to suffer. All the while, if he's a good pastor, he's going to do what Paul did.

Paul who wrote be anxious about nothing also wrote he has constant anxiety for the churches he wasn't sinning he was talking about the heart of a real shepherd because that's what Paul had and you have that constant anxiety for the people of the church it's amazing I couldn't have predicted it I've read the scripture and I'll tell you experientially it is amazing the waking up every day like thinking about you people. I can't believe it, to be honest. One of the reasons I never even thought I'd be a pastor was I never thought I cared about people enough.

I like preaching at them at like Ohio State, but I didn't think I wanted to get messy with them. And you know what? I just love you guys so much. It's a really, really big thing to me. But so you don't domineer over those in your charge, 1 Peter 5.3, be examples to them. So this is why there's qualifications.

You can't be an example to people if you're looking at pornography. You can't be an example to people if you can't have control of your household and have a wife that wants to listen to you and kids that'll listen to you. You can't tell someone else, hey man, get your kids in line if you don't get your kids in line. So there's some practical success that men have to have.

And you're not the domineero for people. You're not their boss. But I'll tell you what, you can make your pastor's life a lot easier by obeying them. When he gives you a suggestion, don't argue with him so much. Just try it. Seems like a lot of people get frustrated because they want a guy to be their pastor, but they don't really want the guy to be their pastor.

I hope you know what I mean by that. Turn to Hebrews 13. Your pastor is going to receive an unfading crown of glory from God one day, and he'll endure with much long-suffering your foolishness. Lord willing, you'll all have lots of really good elders the rest of your lives, and some of you boys in here will become those. one day I'll call I'll call Jude Roberts for advice on something you know if he's awake ok he's awake good but you have a responsibility to your pastor and to your pastors and to every other church member but in Hebrews 13 I want you to understand this in verse 17 the apostle or whoever wrote it says obey your leaders and submit to them.

So in one passage we're saying they're not domineering over those but you should submit to them. There is a level of wow let's just put ourselves under this person as the fifth commandment teaches us to do and let's try to be a part of something a little bigger than just I do what I want to do. And it says for they are keeping watch over your souls. Alright. as those who have to give an account.

So in some very real way, they're going to stand before God and actually give an account for the people that God gave into their care. So in Ezekiel 34 where it says God's going to judge between the sheep, we didn't read all the verses, he's judging between the fat sheep and the skinny sheep because he's realizing that the pastors are feeding the ones that look good, fattening them up so they can eat them. And then some of them they're just ignoring.

And so God's going to judge the shepherds. But then listen, what's it say? Let them do this with joy and not with groaning. You have a responsibility to intentionally try to make shepherding you joyful. And if you're not doing that, you should start. and then the writer of Hebrews actually has in them because it would be no advantage to you not to. It's actually good for you.

Like if you're a selfish person, well, let your pastor shepherd you with joy because it's good for you. God has all these really neat ways that things happen where if you do the right things, it's actually what's good for you too. So you can be selfish and you're actually sinful when you're selfish, but you end up doing some right things still. and that's why society hasn't completely destroyed itself yet it's because it's impossible not to do right things even if you're selfish sometimes But this is Peter's charge.

Shepherds have a very serious job. The church has the opportunity to bless them, to help them, to be gracious to them, encourage them, help them with things, be patient with them, I'm not trying to make this sermon about me but unless you don't know I'm really new to being a pastor right now I'm probably going to screw up something that might affect you it might be something you thought well that was obvious why did you do that wrong so be patient be patient if you're not a member of the church I'm shepherding the flock of God that is among me so don't expect too much from me as I have daily anxiety for the church now so I try to reach out to things, to people and I'm interested in people who are visiting and prospective members but in the end I have flock to shepherd I'm going to feed that flock, I'm going to feed them the word of God I'm going to trust they're going to hold me accountable to that and they going to listen to it They going to grow from it I going to grow right along with people the idea that I will receive an unfading crown of glory from Jesus Christ one day beyond I mean salvation is enough right and then just the thought that I just cast it at his feet it's all His and so let's all just work together to do that together Father thank you for your word you are the one who knows our need you're the one who is aware of our deficiencies you're aware of our sin you're aware of our hearts and your word like a sharp two edged sword pierces to the division of soul and spirit and is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. And no creature is hidden from the sight of Jesus Christ to whom we will give an account.

And so I pray that you would use your word to convert souls to you today. I pray that you would use your word to encourage Christians and to challenge Christians. I pray that you would bless the remainder of our worship that it would be a time of holy and pure exaltation of the one who deserves it, Jesus Christ. Amen.