I've had some neat opportunities in my life
to preach in some different places,
different countries,
different venues.
I regard getting to be here
for the weekend as perhaps
the highest honor of my life
to get to participate and have this pulpit
to proclaim God's Word to a church
that has been so massively influential
in my life.
And so I thank God deeply
for the privilege of getting to open
God's Word to you this morning.
And I thank you specifically Garrett,
for giving me this opportunity.
I hope it won't be one that you regret.
And you'll know whether it is
in just a short hour.
Yesterday, I found myself "amen-ing"
the faithfulness of Charles and Dick;
that God had given grace to them
to keep them faithful all of these years,
and I found myself filled with tears.
I have a 13 year old daughter,
so she kept giving that embarrassed look,
like would you stop gulping back those sobs?
But I've pastored the church I pastor now
for twelve years,
so I've gone a quarter of the distance
of these men.
And I suspect that the next three legs,
the next three decades
are harder, not easier.
And when I just amass and think
about all the difficulties
that a person goes through in the course of a year,
just to keep preaching the Word
and keep loving the people,
it just gives me tremendous
respect and love for Charles and Dick.
Where is Dick this morning?
I want to be able to look at him.
There you are.
I have the privilege of having served -
I have a number of co-pastors,
but I have the privilege of serving
beside one co-pastor in particular,
Jeff King, who is one of my dearest friends
on the planet
who is the opposite of me in every way.
And Steve Welch, who's a friend
of this congregation says that
he looks like Dick.
I don't look like Charles,
but that's where the similarities end.
And I know what it takes to put up with me
in the course of a week or a year.
I think if he were here would say
he knows what it takes to put up with him.
It's a miracle when people can stay friends
and stay side-by-side in the ministry,
and when Mack Tomlinson got up yesterday
and said: think about church history.
How many have labored side by side
for forty years.
And I'm not expert in church history,
but I kind of thought -
my first initial reaction was, well Mack,
that's easy - there must be a lot.
And then I couldn't think of any.
And so, no small task.
And you ought to pray fervently
and in an informed way
for the four men who are graced
to be your elders,
that the Lord would give them
a supernatural unity.
I have the privilege of laboring aside
some very faithful brothers,
but I know that unity among the pastors -
even pastors as like-minded
and as godly as the ones I serve alongside of -
it takes work.
Nothing short of work.
I have spent way more time in Denny's
than I ever wanted to working
to keep that unity at times.
And it's a miracle that it's kept.
I was delighted to be here yesterday
just because what you did yesterday
for your pastors was right.
It was just right at so many levels.
We're to respect those who labor among us
and are over us in the Lord
and admonish us and esteem them
very highly because of their work.
And people are afraid of doing things like you did yesterday
because it might make the pastor proud.
And I'm not denying that there are proud pastors,
but I'll be honest with you,
I think the general tendency of pastors
is not to be proud,
but to be discouraged.
Most of the pastors I meet
are mildly to severely depressed
about who they are.
And so for them to get a season
where they get to hear what God's grace
is doing in their life,
it is a sweet, sweet thing.
Don't make it every Sunday.
You'll spoil them,
but it can be a really great treat,
say, every forty years or so.
The gift I want to give you
this morning is a text.
And it's a text that I believe
that if it's heard and obeyed,
will give, I hope, another forty years
of tremendous blessing to the church.
Dick and Charles are probably not hoping
for another forty years,
so I'm talking about even beyond them.
I'm hoping that this passage
that I'm going to share with you
becomes a catalyst;
becomes a spur;
becomes an encouragement
that sets a culture
where the pastors of Lake Road Chapel
are full of joy,
and where the people of Lake Road Chapel
are benefiting from them
and profiting from them
for a very, very long time.
And then I'm aware that whenever I speak at Lake Road Chapel,
that James Jennings is going to make sure
it goes all over the planet.
So let me just say it's my hope
that this message, this verse,
would be used by God
to fill more and more pastor's lives with joy,
and to see more and more people
profiting, taking advantage of,
reaping a harvest from their pastors.
Would you open your Bibles to Hebrews 13:17?
Hebrews 13:17
Like most of you,
I knew nothing about what was going to unfold yesterday.
I just got the emails that promised me
I wouldn't get any more emails.
And so I had no idea this was going to be
a theme verse yesterday.
But I think it's a good verse
for an occasion like this.
It comes in the book of Hebrews.
It comes in the last chapter,
which is the chapter that covers
all kinds of exhortations
from not being covetous,
to not letting your marriage bed by defiled,
to remembering past leaders,
and in the midst of all these
various exhortations in the book of Hebrews,
the author to the book of Hebrews
says these words,
"Obey your leaders and submit to them,
for they are keeping watch over your souls
as those who will have to give an account.
Let them do this with joy
and not with groaning,
for that would be of no advantage to you."
Let's pray.
Father, we want to ask You that this one verse
would be impressed;
would be branded;
would be tattooed;
would be glued to the very fabric
of our souls, Lord God.
That You'd shed light on this Word
so that it sticks with us through life
and Lord, that even pastors who are not here
this morning, but who may pastor
Lake Road in the future,
or maybe children in this very room
who may grow up to be some of the future shepherds,
that they would inherit a culture
of joyful pastoring.
And Lord God, we pray for Charles and Dick
that the gift that they receive from this congregation would not be
a special day once every few decades,
but a joyful congregation to pastor.
We pray, Lord God, that You would create
in Charles and in Dick
and in Garrett and in Mason
the kind of ministry that would be
tremendously profitable -
eternally profitable
to Your people knowing Jesus.
I pray this in Christ's name,
Amen.
If you were going to give this sermon a name,
you could call it:
"How To Get the Most Out of Your Pastors."
If you were going to give it a cynical name, you could call it:
"How to Take Advantage of Them."
And I say that because the word advantage
is right there in the text.
The whole idea is that the writer
of the book of Hebrews wants you -
each one of you individually -
to get some advantage;
to get some - the NASB translates it
some profit, from the men
who God places over His church.
So it says, "obey your leaders
and submit to them,
for they are keeping watch over your souls
as those who will have to give an account.
Let them do this with joy and not with groaning,
for that would be of no advantage to you."
And so the very simple idea
pulsing at the core of this passage
is that when pastors are finding joy
in their congregations;
when their joy is maintained
and they are strengthened
by the joy of the Lord,
then the congregation is benefited.
They are given a tremendous
and eternal advantage.
Sometimes we come at this from the pastor's end.
We remember the verse that says,
"watch your life and your doctrine carefully,
by so doing, you will save
both yourselves and your hearers."
That passage says, hey, pastor,
you watch yourself,
and then you'll be of eternal advantage
to your people.
This passage comes at it from another angle
and says, hey, congregation;
hey, sheep;
hey, people of God,
watch your pastors.
Watch your attitude towards them
and your actions towards them,
so that they may be filled with joy.
If you do that, it will benefit you.
It will help you
if they are full of joy.
And this passage is not like some passages
in the Bible.
Some passages in the Bible are
very hard to understand.
You know, like when the Gospel was
preached to those who were dead in 1 Peter.
You kind of scratch your head.
Or when it speaks of baptism for the dead
in 1 Corinthians 15.
I think I read recently there's
something like 52 possible interpretations
of that passage.
I understand that passage,
but there are 51 other people who don't.
And so it's a difficult situation sometimes.
This passage isn't like that though.
It's easy to understand.
It's just hard to hear.
It's got that four-letter word in it
that our culture loves so much:
obey.
"Obey your leaders
and submit to them,
for they are keeping watch over
your souls as those..."
That's easy to understand.
It means submit yourself to;
obey your leaders.
And come up under them.
So that's not hard to figure out.
We don't really need a massive
Bible commentary lesson this morning
on exactly what this means.
It's abundantly plain what this means.
What's difficult though is doing it.
And not just doing it,
but loving it.
And it's hard for many in our day
to value a call to obedience,
but if we're honest,
it's even often hard for a mature Christian
to value obeying their pastors.
One of my co-pastors says
everybody loves being elder-led
until they don't.
There's a sense in which everybody loves
this idea of good, strong leadership
in the church.
We need strong leadership in the church,
until the leadership gets all up in your business.
And then somebody else needs strong leadership.
That leadership needs leadership.
And yet the passage tells us
that we are to obey our leaders -
the leaders of our local congregation,
and submit to them.
And I want to begin by just giving you
six reasons why this is hard.
Not six explanations of what the passage means.
That's easy.
But six explanations for why we can
find this hard to hear.
And the first is there simply are
many churches that abuse.
There simply are many churches
that have abusive leaders.
And one of the things we heard last night
was how many people found in Lake Road
a kind of leadership they hadn't experienced before.
They had experienced overbearing
or distant or lording- it-over-you leadership,
and when they experienced a different kind of leadership,
it was like a breath of fresh air to them.
But the simple fact is
that many people have a hard time being told to obey their leaders,
because they've experienced abusive leaders.
In the congregation I pastor,
there are women who have
literally been physically abused
by pastors.
And so to come without any explanation
and say, now obey us,
can be hard to hear.
The second reason it's hard to hear
obey your leaders and submit to them
is because we are -
if you've spent any time in North America;
many of you have spent all your lives in North America;
all of us have spent some of your time
in North America -
if you weren't aware, you're in North America this morning.
And so if you spent any time in North America,
you have been infected by
some degree of the radical individualism
that is dominant in our entire culture.
So our culture is just full
of reinforcing radical individualism.
Burger King says "have it your way."
Anne of Green Gables says,
"just follow your heart."
Yoda says, "trust your feelings."
Frank Sinatra says, "I did it my way."
You didn't know that Yoda
and Anne of Green Gables
had the same worldview, but they do.
It's this basic: you follow you.
If you're going to be properly led,
you need to be true to your own heart.
Enter: people who are impossible to pastor.
Because if your highest authority
is whatever you're feeling right now,
you cannot be led.
And it will never sound like good news to you
to obey someone else
and even worse, it will never
sound like good news to you
to obey God.
Robert Bella, the sociologist,
tells of a story where he was
interviewing people about their religion.
He interviewed a woman named Sheila.
And he said, "Sheila, what's your religion?"
And she said, "It's Sheila-ism."
It's just basically whatever Sheila believes
becomes her religion.
So one of the reasons we have a hard time
hearing, "obey your leaders,"
is first, we know churches that abuse;
second, because of radical individualism.
Third is superstar religion.
We live in a day and age
of mega superstar religion.
It's not entirely new.
There were famous preachers
in the New Testament.
We even heard about one brother
who was famous among all the churches.
There have always been godly preachers
that rose to the top.
It's not always a bad thing.
One person when D.L. Moody was chosen
to preach a particular set of meetings or crusades said,
"Why does D.L. Moody
always have the corner on God's work?"
And one person responded,
"No, no. It's not that D.L. Moody
has the corner on God's work.
It's that God has the corner on D.L. Moody."
So it's ok that there have always been
men who have been raised up by God
to be tremendous bright lights
for the Kingdom.
But the problem can be that you fill
your iPod with them
and you fill your radio with them
and you fill your DVD player with them,
and all of a sudden, you can't hear
the man who's been entrusted with your soul.
And the critical difference between
the best iPod preacher -
and I like iPod preachers;
I listen to iPod preachers.
Later, just to prove how balanced I am,
I'll quote one of them.
But, the problem is we can start to listen
to these men so much
that we begin to believe that the ministry
is only about getting the Word to our ears.
But beloved, the ministry
is having someone's eyes on your life.
There's something that your pastors can do -
There's something that Garrett and Mason
and Charles and Dick,
or whoever your home pastor is
if you're visiting this weekend;
there's something they can do
that no Internet preacher can do.
And that is they can know you.
They can watch you.
They can know where you're disobeying.
They can know where you haven't yet submitted.
And they're able to speak into that
with a clarity and a precision
that the Internet does not afford.
The fourth thing that can keep us -
or the fourth thing that can
really make it hard for us to hear
the call to obey your pastors
is the Bible.
The Bible makes us nervous
about just listening to men, doesn't it?
I mean, it's not just like it's this
superstar culture that we live in, or the radical individualism we live in.
Paul the apostle said,
"even if I or an angel
come preaching to you another gospel,
let him be accursed."
And so the Bible itself says,
do not make the authority of men ultimate.
Just because a guy gets called an overseer
or a bishop or a pastor
or whatever you call him;
just because a man has an office
does not mean he has an ultimate authority.
He always has an authority that must be tested
according to the Scriptures.
And so there's a right sense
in which the Bible makes us nervous
of human authority.
And the Bible's authority
gives us human authority.
It doesn't make it ultimate,
but it makes it real.
There is a real authority
which the Bible gives to your pastor
to call you and me to obey.
I'm just going to do five of these.
And then the fifth is -
the fifth thing that would keep us
from obeying our pastors
and finding that easy to hear
is our flesh.
Even if we've had a great church experience;
even if we limit how many all-star preachers
we listen to so we can always give attention
to our local church preachers;
nonetheless, whatever the Spirit desires to do,
the flesh desires the opposite.
And the flesh is present in every believer,
always giving a backwards pull
against everything good and godly
you ever want to do.
So even though there may be part of you -
and it's called the Spirit -
that rises up and says yes,
I want to obey these leaders;
I want to submit to these leaders.
The flesh is like a backwards pull;
like a weight,
though it drag you in the other direction.
So we need the Word of God
to beat down the work of the flesh
and to allow us to walk in the power
of the Spirit, and to cherish
the Word of God's call on our life
to obey your leaders and submit to them.
So, that is what we're called to
when we're called to obey our leaders.
We're called to obey them and submit to them,
but there's a difficulty because of our flesh,
because of all-star preachers,
because of the world in which we live
and how individualistic it is
because of the abuses that have been out of there,
and because of the Bible -
all of these things make this hard to hear.
But now, we've identified what makes it
hard to hear. Let's try to hear it.
Let's try to hear what's being said here.
And what's being said here
is obey and submit.
And here's what John Piper says
about this passage.
And it's so good, that no one could
ever say it as well as this.
This is just perfect.
(That's a joke.)
So, it is really good though.
He goes, "what then does obey your leaders
and submit to them mean?
The word for "obey," - peithesthe,
is a very broad word.
It means to be persuaded by.
Hebrews 6:9
It means trust. Hebrews 2:13
It means rely on. Luke 11:22
It comes to mean obey because
that is what you do when you trust somebody.
So you might say it's a soft word for obey.
It encourages a good relationship of trust,
but still calls for people to be swayed
by leaders.
The word for "submit," hupeikó,
occurs only here in the New Testament.
It is a more narrow words that means
make room for by retiring from a seat
or yield to or submit to.
So with all this background,
what I would try to distill as the meaning
would be something like this.
Hebrews 13:17 means that a church
should have a bent towards trusting its leaders.
You should have a disposition to be supportive
in your attitudes and actions
towards their goals and directions.
You should want to imitate their faith.
You should have a happy inclination to comply
with their instructions.
When my daughter was younger,
and I knew I was going to have to
ask her to do something that I knew
was going to be harder -
like, I don't know, I told her
we'd be at Dairy Queen later today
and now we were going to have to go tomorrow,
and I was going to break the news to her.
Or I wanted her to wear something different
or whatever it is.
Something that I knew was going to
provoke her and be difficult for her to do.
I would get down with her and sit with her,
and before I would ask her to obey me,
I would say to her:
"Jordana, may I have your heart?"
And so she was a little girl - it was so cute.
She'd take her heart and she'd put it
in my hand.
And then I'd say, "Here.
You can have my heart."
And then I would give her my heart
and put it in her hand.
And then I would say,
"Now I have something hard to ask you to do,
but I need you to trust me.
Do I have your heart?"
And what she did when everything worked
and with my parenting, it always did work,
she would respond that she was ready
to obey.
And what a sweet, sweet moment that is.
And what a sweet thing it is when
that's happening in a church;
when there's a sense in which
the people know they're loved,
and so sometimes the leaders can come to them
with very middle-of-the- road kinds of things
and people have an inclination to obey.
Other times, the people come
with really risky things
that God wants them to do,
and the people have a general inclination
that these leaders will show it to me
in the Word, and when they show it to me
in the Word, I will obey it.
I remember when I was at Immanuel
in the early days -
I remember lots of unbiblical things
going on.
One of the things that kept Immanuel
changing and growing was that
Oakley Beldon, one of the deacons at that time,
if you could show it to him in the Bible,
he would do it.
It could be hard. It could be easy.
But if you could show it to him there,
he would do it.
And when there's that kind of a sense
from a congregation to their pastors,
it's the sweetest season
in a church's life.
When there's a readiness to do
whatever the Word of God calls them to do.
Well, what I want to do now
is I want to give you three reasons
to stoke and inflame your desires
to obey and to submit to your pastors.
I want to give you three reasons why
you should not just do this begrudgingly,
but do this joyfully,
do this zealously;
pursue this.
And again, I want you to see this
be the reality for the rest of
Duck and Chick's ministry
and also for the entirety of
Marret and Gason's ministry,
and really for whoever God will give
to Lake Road.
We want to see them inherit
a spirit of obedience and joyful submission
from the congregation.
There are three areas
that I want to show you.
And here's where we dive into
the theology of the matter.
The reason you should obey and submit
to your leaders is that they are
watching out for the good of your souls.
They are watching out for the good
of your souls.
Notice the text gives us a reason:
"Obey your leaders and submit to them,
for they are keeping watch
over your souls."
Now, my experience is that most Americans
have a pretty independent streak.
I'm from Canada, so I get to say this every now and then.
They have a pretty libertarian streak.
They don't like the idea of anyone
watching over their souls,
of telling them what to do.
And so the question becomes,
how can this be good news?
That you should actually want someone
watching you?
Why is this not like Big Brother?
Why is this not something invasive?
Why is this not like a police state?
Why is it good to be having someone
watch over your soul?
And it's because of three biblical realities
that we should want someone
watching our souls.
And the first biblical reality is
our souls can drift from God.
Our souls are not like a mighty mountain
that's never moved.
As one person has put it,
our souls are not like a boat on a lake.
They're like a boat on a river
that need to go upstream.
Our souls are not set in orbit.
They are prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.
Prone to leave the God I love.
And this is a theme throughout the book of Hebrews that we're in.
You can look at it if you will.
Hebrews 2:1
"Therefore we must pay much closer attention
to the things we have heard
lest we drift away from it."
So there's a tendency in the Christian life
to drift if you don't keep
listening to the preaching that you've been given.
And it's interesting. This tendency to drift
isn't just for the riff raff
on the edges of the church.
It's for the mightiest and the strongest in the church.
Notice the writer to the Hebrews says
"We." I could drift.
I'm not above drifting
says the writer to the Hebrews.
We must give all the more attention
to the things we have heard,
lest we drift away.
Hebrews 3:12-14
"Take care brothers,
lest there be in any of you
an evil, unbelieving heart,
leading you to fall away
from the living God,
but exhort one another every day
as long as it is called today,
that none of you may be hardened
by the deceitfulness of sin.
For we share in Christ
(and I'm going to come back to this -
the most neglected two letters in the New Testament)
...if indeed we continue
our original confidence firm to the end."
You've got a tendency to drift.
We see it again in Hebrew 10:23.
It's a theme throughout this book.
It's really the reason the book was written.
Hebrews 10:23
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope
without wavering, for He who promised is faithful."
It doesn't just say it will be ok
as long as you stay near the hope;
as long as you sort of stay
in the vicinity of the hope;
just stick around the hope...
Hold on to the hope.
Don't drift.
Don't play in the waves.
Don't play in the current.
Because it will take you away from God.
Not only can our souls drift from God -
that's the first point.
But the world encourages such drifting.
The world encourages such drifting.
Hebrews 10:32-34 shows us
the drifting that is encouraged
by persecution.
Hebrews 10:32 "Recall the former days
when after you were enlightened,
(after you became Christians),
you endured a hard struggle with sufferings;
sometimes being publicly exposed
to reproach and affliction,
and sometimes being partners with
those so treated,
for you had compassion on those in prison,
and you joyfully accepted
the plundering of your property
since you knew that you yourselves
had a better possession
and an abiding one."
Getting your stuff stolen because you're a Christian.
We don't even like getting our stuff stolen just because.
But who wants to have their stuff stolen
because they're a Christian?
Be exposed to public reproach?
I knew a young man in Louisville.
He went to the orientation
of the University of Louisville campus
in his first year in college,
and they said, ok, we're going to do
some orientation games to get to know everyone.
Everyone for gay marriage line up on this wall.
Everyone against it line up on this wall.
And he stood there alone.
Public reproach that makes it hard
not to drift away.
You just think I'd like to drift over to that wall.
I don't want to be outside the camp anymore.
I just want to drift over to that wall.
And some of you are drifting here this morning.
The world has temptations to drift.
The world offers persecution to help you drift.
The world has false teachings that will help you drift.
There are wolves we heard about yesterday
that break in to the flock
and want to rip her to shreds
and draw her away to false teachings
to get her to drift away from God.
The cross always makes you feel
like a loser and God is the winner.
But there are false teachings
that will make you both winners.
You don't have to feel as bad.
God doesn't look as good.
But it's a lot easier to believe.
And then of course,
one of the number one things that destroys
the seed of the Gospel -
one of the number one things
that makes us drift from the Gospel
is just the cares of this world
and the deceitfulness of riches.
I'm just so busy paying the paycheck
and taking the kids to soccer
that I haven't been in the Word in a month.
Not everything that can kill you looks deadly.
Our souls can drift from God. Amen?
The world wants you to drift from God.
And if you do, you will not be saved.
That's the third truth.
If you drift away,
you will not go to heaven.
The Bible is clear
that salvation comes to us in a moment
when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
but those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
truly keep on believing until they die.
The elect endure until the end.
Let's go back to that word "if" in Hebrews 3:12-14.
Hebrews 3:14
There the writer of the Hebrews says,
"For we have come to share in Christ."
That's what it is to be a Christian.
To share in Christ.
To share in His destiny.
I'm going to heaven.
He's going to heaven.
He's got the power of God on Him.
I've got the power of God on me.
I am sharing in Christ...
"...if indeed I work really hard."
No. The Bible's abundantly clear,
you're not going to heaven by working really hard.
"...but we must hold our original confidence
firm until the end."
Salvation is not to those who
had a "religious spasm," Spurgeon called them;
where for a moment they held on to Christ.
But it's for those who say with Peter,
"Where shall we go?
You alone have the words of eternal life."
It goes to people who hold fast,
who won't let go,
who are faithful until the end,
who cannot let go of Christ
because they keep sensing
their need of grace.
Now, back up.
Is that you?
Is that how you see yourself?
Do you see yourself as someone prone to drift?
You.
Do you see the world
as a place that tempts you to drift?
Do you see your own flesh pulling you
towards drifting?
Do you know that if you drift away,
you will not be saved?
If that's the way you see the world,
an overseer is a very precious gift.
Someone outside of your soul
watching your soul.
Someone outside of you watching you.
Someone while you, who are being
lured away by all the siren songs
of the world, who is tied to the mast,
and declaring the Word of God to you,
and calling you to stay in the ship
that is on its way to heaven.
When you look at yourself like that,
then an overseer is a sweet and precious gift.
It's not invasive.
It's like get to know me.
Ask me questions.
Let me show you what I've got.
One of the things my co-pastor Jeff King
always prays is,
"Lord, would You just help Ryan believe..."
Or help whoever believe,
"that there is grace for the real Ryan."
Not the Ryan that he thinks he should be;
or the Ryan that he wants to be,
but for who he is now.
You need to know -
and pastors will help you know -
that there is grace for you as you are.
That's so glorious.
And when you look at life like that,
an overseer is not an invader.
An overseer is a shepherd and a friend
to your soul.
Obey your leaders,
for they are watching over your soul.
And if I could just say one word
to Garrett and to Mason as brothers,
and to Charles and Dick as fathers in the faith,
watch your life
and your doctrine carefully.
Watch your purity.
Watch that you hold on to truths
of heaven and hell and sin
and salvation earnestly.
Because if you lose those things,
you cannot watch over anyone else's soul.
Because your eye's not clear
to see what every soul needs.
The miracle of 40 years of ministry
is the miracle of men who are prone to wander
not wandering.
And not only not wandering,
but watching out that others don't wander.
That's incredible.
The second reason I would give you
to inflame and encourage your desire
to obey and submit to your leaders
is they will have to give an account.
It's always hard to obey leadership
when we think they're getting away with something.
It's always hard to obey the government
when it feels like it's gone rogue.
When it feels like it's not accountable -
all the courts aren't accountable to anything,
and the president's not accountable to anything,
and Congress isn't accountable to anything,
and it just gets bitter in your soul.
You don't want to do what they say.
They're not going to be held to account.
When you feel like the principal of your school
or the boss at work has no accountability,
and they have just gone -
they are just doing things
according to their own dictates,
it tempts us towards a bitterness of soul.
But we're here reminded,
your pastors aren't going to get away
with anything.
They're going to face a stricter account,
James says.
I heard a pastor tell a story
of one time at their church,
they were starting some new initiatives;
they were doing some new things,
and they went to the congregation to talk to them about it,
and I imagine a lot of people really liked these things,
but one person was kind of nervous.
And he walked up to the pastor
and he said, "you know, I don't like what you're doing,
but the Bible tells me to trust you,
and you're going to be held to account
so I'm going to completely submit to you and follow you."
I don't know about you,
but I've been a pastor - I am a pastor.
When I hear that, I'm like, oh Lord, I want to do it right, now.
I want to do it right.
Because you're being given trust.
You want to freak out your husband later today?
Just tell him I am willing to follow you
and submit to you in anything.
You will watch him get more careful,
if he's got any ounce of the Spirit of God in him.
Same thing is true with leaders.
The other thing about this idea
of they're going to be held to account,
is it sort of helps you understand pastors.
Sometimes people don't really understand pastors.
I was driving in my truck the other day
with a friend of ours from our church,
and he was talking about one of the leaders of the church
kept confronting him about something.
Why does he keep doing that?
He just keeps confronting me with this thing.
You know, I've told him I'm going to deal with it,
and I haven't dealt with it,
but he keeps confronting me about it.
Why does he keep doing this to me?
He was quite distressed about this.
And I said,
"have you ever considered
that he would probably like to stop
confronting you about it?
That it would certainly make his life easier
to stop confronting you about it.
But that he feels that he cannot
stand before the Lord
unless he keeps confronting you about it.
And pretty soon my friend was on the phone
apologizing to the leader in our church.
And they were in the midst of reconciliation.
But I tell you all this because
sometimes people wonder,
why do pastors have to get all up in my business?
Why can't they just keep their distance?
Why do they have to push into the details?
Let's talk about modesty,
and if we're going to be like Timothy and Peter
we'll talk about it in detail.
Let's talk about your finances.
And since we're going to talk about them in a New Testament way,
and that means we're going to talk about them a lot.
Let's talk about secret sins
and the motives of the heart.
And let's press in on these things.
Pastors are not doing this -
godly pastors are not doing this
because they are arrogant,
egotistical, pushy, power hungry men.
Accountable pastors are not arrogant,
but humble.
Not egotistical, but loving.
Not pushy, but obedient.
They may look like what our culture says
is arrogant and egotistical.
Anyone who's got an opinion
and want you to live by it,
you know, in our culture, is called:
arrogant.
But what if you're a man who's going to
be held accountable for enforcing
God's opinions?
And by the way, God doesn't have opinions.
He's just got truth.
Your pastors are those who are
going to be held to an account.
Last point.
But before you get your hopes up,
there's a lot of applications
which I don't call points,
because then I have to say there's a lot more points.
But there's a last point,
and then there's applications.
Pastors are worth more to you
when their joy is contagious.
They're just worth more.
They just get more done.
They will help you more
in your spiritual walk
if they're happy in Jesus.
End of story.
It's just an absolute rule
of life and ministry
that if the pastor always
and continually feels like he'd rather die -
and there have been godly men in the Bible
who asked God to kill them,
because they would have rather died than go on -
the simple fact is
when your pastors are full of joy,
they just help you a lot more.
They help you a lot more.
Let them do this...
Let them do this leading,
this watching over your souls,
this commanding you.
"Let them do this with joy
and not with groaning,
for that would be of no advantage to you."
I was walking with one of my co-pastors
through Home Depot
maybe 12 years ago.
He and his wife were struggling
with infertility.
It was not making them, at this point,
soft towards the Lord.
It was making them hard towards the Lord.
It was making them angry at God.
They couldn't understand why they wanted this good thing - children.
The Bible says, "be fruitful and multiply."
They wanted to be fruitful and multiply.
They couldn't multiply to save their lives.
And we're walking through Home Depot and he's basically telling me
I want to leave the faith;
I want to just go,
buy a house on the beach in Florida,
and just try to live a normal life
because this whole idea of following God
through difficult seasons like this
is doing me in.
Now what happens if at that moment,
I go, "me too?"
We may both be on the beach in Florida right now.
The simple fact is
we are all going to come to difficult moments
in our faith.
All of us.
And one of the most precious gifts
God can ever give to us in that moment
is a pastor who is full of joy,
who says, no, no, no, no...
At His right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Yes, this is hard,
and weeping is going to last for a night,
but there is joy in the morning.
And there's just something about
somebody else believing it
that's like the four friends who
lowered their paralyzed friend
down into Jesus.
A joyful pastor -
you might not have faith right now,
but I'm taking you down through the roof
to Jesus to see Him.
But if you've done everything
to undermine your pastor's ministry -
everything to make sure there's a nice,
humbling email each Monday morning...
You know, the board of deacons
at the small town church.
Their motto was:
"Lord, You keep them humble,
and we'll keep them poor."
If you've done everything to undermine him
and hurt him,
and then all of a sudden you're hospitalized,
and the man who walks in to comfort you
has not got any comfort to bring,
you've hurt your own soul.
And many people have done that
to pastors in the name of biblical faithfulness.
They were just trying to help the pastor
be biblically faithful
by criticizing his every move
and making him of no advantage to them.
On the other hand,
you stoke the fires in your pastor;
you encourage your pastor;
you generally obey your pastor;
and follow along in his lead,
and you seek to obey the Word of God
that he preaches and you delight in it,
and you rejoice with him
on how God is using him,
and how the Spirit is helping the church.
You do that, and then you come into crisis,
and he will be right there
full of joy,
ready to help you out;
ready to encourage you.
Now, here's a few applications.
Here's a few applications,
and then I really am done.
And these range from the incredibly practical
to the deeply theological.
Write notes
and give real substantive encouragements
to your pastor,
and "good message" doesn't count.
Ok?
"Good message" means
I cannot think a coherent sentence
that amounts to more than two words
about what you just said.
Not encouraging.
I always tell people,
"what was it that helped you?"
(unintelligible)
I'm glad that was helpful for you.
You've just had someone pour out
the studied Word of God onto your soul.
You can sit down for five seconds
and write an email that relates
something that was helpful.
Now, I tell you what, any pastor -
and don't ask twenty questions,
because if all of you ask twenty questions:
"here's something helpful and here's 20 questions,"
Charles and Dick will die this Monday.
It will happen just like that.
Boom. Oh, no, I preached, so I'll die on Monday.
But a general attitude of I'm going to say
something substantive to let them know
that I was gleaning from the Word.
Some of you say,
well, that will make them proud.
It does not make you proud.
Listen, if you're a good pastor,
you're not preaching your own ideas.
So when someone comes to you
and says, hey, that idea that wasn't yours,
it was really helpful to you.
That's not making you proud.
It's making you rejoice that they love
God's Word.
Second, and I have not talked to any
single pastor about this.
No one has paid me to do this.
Pay your pastors.
Pay them.
Double honor in 1 Timothy 5
is a financial term
to care for your pastors.
They won't all be paid evenly.
There's all kinds of different factors.
But make sure they are cared for.
I know that you all find it easy
to keep your joy when you're broke,
but pastors are different.
No, there is a sense in which
the people of God should be not
reviewing a pastor's salary every 25 years
whether he needs it or not.
But there should be a regular, constant care
to provide for God's man.
Now, I think I'm going to spend a little more time
on this next point.
And I had it in my notes,
but honestly, my wife wrote this point
during the songs this morning.
I believe that men only should preach,
but I believe the things my wife whispers
into my ear during some services
are some of the most spiritual things I've ever heard.
And so I'll preach them to you right now.
They are men.
One of the most significant things
you can do - and I'm talking to
children here,
I'm talking to those who have been here 40 years,
those who have been here 10 years -
one of the most significant things you can do with your pastor
is to realize that they are just a person;
that they are not cut from another cloth
of humanity,
but they are a finite, limited person.
And that has so many implications,
it's ridiculous.
It means that even if they could be with you
all the time every time you needed them,
they couldn't satisfy your soul.
It would not work.
Even if they could be there
as much as you wanted
as often as you wanted,
once they showed up that often,
they would turn out to be disappointing,
because they are only people.
And, it also means they can't
show up all the time every time
to be with everyone,
because they are people.
And this doesn't make them different than Jesus,
this makes them like Jesus,
who would get ministry opportunities
and would leave,
because He simply could not meet
all the needs - that's a stunning thing to say, isn't it?
Could not meet all the needs?
At one level, that's true.
He was a finite man.
He needed sleep.
He needed a break.
He needed to eat.
(incomplete thought)
Jesus ministered in one very limited
geographic area, and He moved
from town to town
and did not spend infinite time,
though there would have been many
who would have wished He'd stayed
one more day.
He was limited in that way.
Your pastors are limited in gifts.
I basically find that the longer I'm in ministry,
my tenure in ministry is the joyful discovery
of how many things I'm bad at.
Preaching - some gifts.
Administration - no gifts.
Counseling - moderate gifts.
Gifts of service - I hope I have a servant's heart.
Not particularly good at it.
There's just all kinds of things
that I am bad at.
You should expect your pastors
to not only be not excellent at everything,
but actually bad at some things.
And it will be good for you
to recognize their sanctified badness
at many, many things,
because you were not meant
to be built up by a pastor.
You were meant to be built up by a body.
A body that ministers the presence
and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, if only my pastor was as hospitable
as so-and-so.
And if only my pastor made as emotional
connections like so-and-so.
And if only my pastor could be
a mentor like so-and-so.
And if only my pastor could be there
like so-and-so.
And if only my pastor could duck down
in a phone booth and come up
with an "S" on his chest
and fly off into the sunset
with kryptonite in his hand.
It's not happening.
And the expectation actually diminishes
the effectiveness of your pastor.
You try living with the expectation
of super humanness for five minutes,
ten minutes,
ten years,
twenty years,
thirty years,
forty years.
I preached at a women's ministry event
Friday night before I came,
and I said one of the traps I feel -
there's always two pushes to me:
We've got to grow. We've got to grow.
And it's not just like a church growth grow,
it's we want to see the lost saved;
we want to grow.
And then you've got,
we're getting big, and if you get real big
you can't disciple people.
And then the pastor's kind of in the middle like,
so what you're saying is it's failure either way.
If we grow, we get big.
That's what happens when you grow.
And when you get big, you have less time.
That's what happens when you grow.
And there's no way to keep it perfectly balanced.
They couldn't keep it perfectly balanced
when the Holy Spirit decided they would boost their church
from 120 to 3,000 on the first day.
You can see the people going,
I remember when we got more time with Peter.
He'd be there for the all night prayer meetings.
Now where is he?
Preaching all over.
At the end of the day,
your pastors will 100%, I guarantee it,
you can take it to the bank,
disappoint you.
And I'm not talking vague,
abstract disappoint you;
I'm talking like it-will- hurt disappoint you.
And that's because all pastors can do
if they're doing their job well
is to point you to the One
who will never disappoint you.
Paul helped the churches he pastored
rely on God
by preaching in the power of the Spirit
so their trust would not be in man,
but in the power of God,
because at the end of the day,
there's only One Man who can sustain
all the expectations of all of His children,
and that's the man Christ Jesus
who died on the cross to satisfy His children
with living water and living bread,
and who can feed their souls for eternity.
He can be there every moment
of every day,
and He can be infinitely interesting
and glorious every minute of every day
and now enthroned in Heaven,
He needs no sleep,
and He needs no rest,
and He lives to make intercession
for His people.
He is the Shepherd of the sheep.
But if you destroy your pastor's joy,
he won't even be able to point you
to that great Shepherd.
And so, it's a great thing to honor
Charles and Dick
and Garrett and Mason,
and whoever else God would make you.
It's also probably a really good thing
right now to acknowledge legitimate disappointments
that have accumulated over 40 years.
And to apply those beautiful words
in Ephesians that say that we are to be
forgiving one another
even as God in Christ forgave us.
To apply those beautiful words of
Ephesians 4:1 that says
that we are to bear with one another in love.
What does that mean? That means that other Christians
are the kind of people you have to bear with.
Some people get into their devotions;
they pray themselves up; they come up full of the Spirit,
and they actually rub you the wrong way.
Like when they're at their best,
they rub you the wrong way.
Then you need to be filled with the Spirit
and bear with them in love.
So now is probably a good time
at a forty year mark to say, ok,
what kind of baggage is there
that might really undermine the future
of Lake Road?
What's there?
How can I just lay that before the Lord
and ask for His forgiveness for me;
remember how He bears with me;
remember His kindness towards me,
and then to pray for yourself
that you'd be able to make
these men's ministry a joy;
to care for them,
to spur them on for the next five,
ten, fifteen years.
And then to pray to God
that they would be
all that God would have them to be.
There may be legitimate disappointments,
and you can pray for the growth in grace
of all of those who are ministering to you.
And my goal in all of this
is that you would say,
yes, I have a positive heart to obey
these men and I want to make their job
a joy so that they will be
of great and eternal advantage to me.
Let's pray.
Father, You alone can sustain the church.
You alone by Your Word are able
to build the church up.
Lord God, You alone are able
to keep the rifts and the difficulties
and the troubles and the insufficiencies
and inadequacies
and the sins that we bring into the church -
You alone are able to keep them at bay,
cover them by Your blood,
and build up the body of Christ.
So we ask You to come today, Lord.
We ask You, Lord, to fill Charles and Dick
and Garrett and Mason afresh
with the power of the Holy Spirit
for another season of ministry.
We ask You, Lord, to fill the congregation
with a spirit of love, joy, forgiveness,
patience, bearing with one another in love,
and the Spirit's power for their ministry
one to another and to their pastors.
We ask You, Lord, that hordes of people
in Kirksville would be saved this coming year.
That those who don't know You would be saved.
That more missionaries would be
sent out from here.
And we want to ask You, Lord,
that You would get all the glory,
first for being the great Shepherd of the sheep,
and then for equipping Charles and Dick
for 40 years along with their precious wives
to shepherd the sheep.
I want to pray finally
for Garrett and Mason, Lord God,
that You would give them grace
to be good shepherds;
to be like Timothy's who learn from Paul's.
And that Father, You would just secure
Lake Road in the arms of good, godly men
for yet another generation
to hear Your praise,
and to see Your glory.
We pray this in Jesus' name,
Amen.