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| THE HEART
OF A SHEPHERD INTRODUCTION In 1990 and 1991 God rescued me from myself. Most of you have heard me talk about God’s mercy to me in those days. He gently showed me that while working full time as a minister of the gospel I had become an idolater. God was not the center of my life, reaching the campus for Christ was the center of my life. God is not whom I loved. Rather I loved leading and teaching and sharing the gospel and having a Christian family and playing basketball and going hunting. During those two years, through books and friends and his Word, he granted me eyes to see that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about me, it’s about God. Life is about God, parenting is about God, ministry is about God. I am no saint as my wife and children will be quick to tell you but the changes that God wrought in my behavior through this earthquake of knowing God as the chief passion and delight of life were monumental. During those two years I developed a growing passion to be a pastor in a local church. There are many reasons for why I wanted to leave college ministry to be a pastor of a local church, but mostly it was a growing conviction that it is in and through the local church that God is doing his saving work. It is among groups of strangers gathered together in an apparently random manner that God is working to save the world. One of the men who fanned the fire of my desire to be become a pastor was Eugene Peterson who planted and then pastored a church in the suburbs of New Jersey for over 30 years. In the introduction to one of his books he says this, “The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God.” Peterson’s vision of the pastor living with a community of people of all ages, from all walks of life for the express purpose of keeping the entire community aware of the presence and work of God in the midst of our daily lives is the vision that drove me to finish seminary and finally to come here to Janesville to plant this church. It’s been five years since Jane and I and our children moved to Janesville. It was four years ago today that River Hills had its first public worship service here at Marshall Middle School. I have been seeking to live out the biblical vision of what it means to be a pastor for these years. Only the great Day of Judgment will tell how faithfully I have followed Christ in that vocation. I can say that I love what I do and I pray to God that my labor among you will not be in vain. In view of this anniversary of our life together as a church and in view of what is riding on our relationship with one another, I want to take this week and next to consider together one of the primary biblical texts describing the motives and manner of spiritual leadership. I want to do this for three reasons:
Next week we will consider the work of a shepherd from these pages. This week we are going to consider the heart of a shepherd. This week we are going to look at what motivated Paul to live as he lived. What were the passions that drove him and that he expects to drive every elder, parent or other spiritual leader in the congregation? If anything stands out in this passage it is that Paul is full of passion, zeal, enthusiasm and that he expects the elders of the local church to have his same passion. MAIN POINT Christian leaders are full of passion for… I. God He is passionate in his love for God (vv. 22-24). In verses 22-24 Paul reveals the primary motive and passion of
his life. Think about what he is saying. God the Holy Spirit is
compelling him to go to Jerusalem. It is God’s will that he go
to Jerusalem. He is going there to deliver financial help to the
church in Jerusalem that he has received from the churches in Why does he go? Let’s look at v. 24. Paul says that his life does not matter to him. What matters to him is that he finish the race that Jesus has set him upon. What matters to him is that he faithfully discharges the task that Jesus assigned to him, the task of bearing witness to the good news of God’s grace. When do people knowingly put themselves in harm’s way in order to obey a command or fulfill a duty? I would argue that ultimately, the only way anyone ever does this sort of thing is when he or she loves the one who has given the command. The apostle Paul eagerly declares that it doesn’t matter what happens to me. My life on planet earth is devoted to one person, Jesus Christ and therefore it is given to doing what he has told me to do. Paul is not primarily motivated by the task but by the person who has given the task. He does not go to certain pain because he likes pain but because the one whom he loves, God the Holy Spirit, has told him to go. His heart is full of affection for God and so he embraces all that God asks of him. He wants to please the one he loves. He is passionate in his trust in God (vv. 22-24). But also, doesn’t his willingness to go into certain suffering reveal his zealous faith in Christ? He really believes that to have Christ and to lose his freedom, his health, his very life is not loss, but gain. He knows that if God is for him then no one can successfully be against him. He cannot be harmed and so while he may encounter pain and suffering, it cannot separate him from what he prizes above all else, the love of God for him. His life is securely hidden with Christ in God and regardless of what happens to him in the present, he is going to live with Christ forever. In addition, it’s not only that he knows that he cannot be harmed but also that the imprisonment and affliction are part of God’s good purposes for him and for the church. He says in Colossians 1: 24, “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christi’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.” Paul knows God is using the sufferings he encounters in his work of proclaiming the gospel of God’s grace to build the church. God has good purposes in his sufferings and so he is not afraid of them. He is passionate in his fear of God (vv. 26-27). Verses 26-27 are almost unintelligible to most modern Christians. They made no sense to me for years. In what sense would Paul be guilty if he did not preach the whole will of God to the Ephesians? What would happen to him if he failed to preach? Paul is alluding to numerous OT passages that are addressed to the prophets. We read probably the clearest of those passages from Ezekiel 33:1-9 (page 611). The warning is based upon a metaphor. The metaphor is that of a walled city with a watchman upon the wall. God says that when he decides to send an army against that city because of the sin in the city and the watchman blows the trumpet and warns the people of the city of the army that is coming and the people in the city do nothing to prepare and so are destroyed, then they will perish for their sin because they ignored the warning. However, if the watchman does not warn the city, while the people will be destroyed for their sin, the watchman will be held accountable for their blood. In other words, a watchman who does not blow the trumpet will be killed for his dereliction of duty. God tells Ezekiel, Paul, every elder and pastor in Christ’s church, every parent, every small group leader, every Christian who speaks for Christ that God is watching and he is listening. All who fail to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” about God’s gospel of grace will bring God’s anger down upon themselves. Paul views himself as a witness on the witness stand who will be called to account if he commits perjury. We will be held accountable by God for every misleading, incomplete or inadequate explanation of God’s gospel. We will be called to account for every person that God intended for us to influence that we did not influence for Christ. We are not all responsible for the same people nor for the same numbers of people. None of you, except the elders, are responsible for the spiritual health of all the people who consider RHCC their church home. But all of us are responsible for some. Now this does not mean that if you have failed to share the gospel with one person that God wanted you to share the gospel with, that you are going to go to hell. It does not mean that if you have misled someone at one time you are now condemned. What this means is that failing to preach the gospel to someone God wants you to preach the gospel to is a sin. Failing to accurately share the truth of God is a sin. What Christians don’t want to do is sin. What Christians do when they sin is confess their sins to God while taking refuge in the death of Christ for their sins. Then they seek to obey Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. However, when those who profess to be Christians persist in their sins and refuse to repent, then the Scriptures say that there is a strong likelihood they are not Christians. When parents profess to be Christians but do nothing to teach the gospel to their children and do not view their failure as sin that must be repented of, then they must wonder if their profession of faith in Christ is a true profession. When pastors who profess to be Christians do not give themselves to the study and teaching of the whole word of God, and do not view the failure to do so as sin to be repented of, then they must wonder if their profession of Christ is a true profession. Paul knows that one day he will have to give an account of his life and ministry to God. He knows that the evidence of his faith in Christ will one day be examined. So he lives now in view of that reality because he does what Jesus commanded Christians in Luke 12, “I tell you friends, Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” You will be saved by your faith in Christ alone, but faith in Christ is never alone. It is always accompanied by obedience to Christ as the expression of faith. He is passionate in his hope in God (vv. 32-35). In v. 25 Paul says that he will never see these men again. In vv. 29-30 he says that he knows that spiritual disaster is going to come upon them through some of them becoming false teachers who will mislead others. But in v. 32 he expresses his great hope and confidence that God will care for them by his word. While he is realistic about the power of sin, he is full of hope in the power of God to overcome sin. He does not fear the future because he knows that God is able to save his people. Then in v. 35 Paul reveals the core of his motivation for working hard. He has suffered in serving people because he knows that Jesus will reward him for his service. There is no hardship that he has experienced, no deprivation, that will not be more than adequately repaid in heaven. “It is more blessed to give than to receive”, is not simply referring to the pleasure we feel when we help someone else. Paul is talking about the fact that Jesus has promised to reward his faithful servants in heaven. The loss of earthly pleasures for the sake of serving others in the name of Jesus will be repaid. This is what Jesus said in Luke 18 when Peter asked what he and the other disciples would receive for having left everything to follow him, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come, eternal life.” When you serve others as service to Christ you are not helping God out. You are the one who receives. God is always glorified as the giver, not as the receiver even in our suffering service. Paul is inflamed with hope in the future glory that will be his when Jesus comes. The glory of heaven will be proportional to the amount of suffering endured for the sake of heaven. As Jim Elliot, the missionary martyr to the Auca Indians said, “A man is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” I’ve been using the illustration of the wagon train heading for Oregon as I’ve been talking with people about the Christian life and about the nature of the church. I hope you will permit me to develop this analogy a bit further. You’re living in Illinois, farming the flat, soggy prairie with your wife and children when a stranger and his family, in a covered wagon stops and rests by your farm. You spend the day talking with him. He tells you that there is free land in Oregon that is fertile and well-drained. You can grow crops there all year round. The winters are mild. There are mountains always in view. He tells you that he is on his way to Dubuque, Iowa to join a wagon train that is going to Oregon. As you listen you believe the promise that there is a better life for you in Oregon. Therefore, you sell the farm, buy a covered wagon, oxen, and supplies and pack up your family and head to Dubuque to join the wagon train. You forsake your life in Illinois in order to gain a better life in Oregon. You spend the next sixth months crossing the prairies and mountains to get to Oregon. Along the way you encounter disease and wild animals, hostile Native Americans, broken down wagons, fighting among yourselves, in short all kinds of problems and sufferings. What kind of leaders will it take to get you to Oregon? The first thing that your leaders will need is to be infected with a great love for Oregon. They must believe the promise of a better life in Oregon more than anyone else on the journey. If they are going to keep you going in the face of all the hardship, they must love the goal to which you are going. They must be inflamed with zeal for Oregon and show by their tireless efforts that getting to Oregon is better than settling in Nebraska, it is better than staying in Illinois, safe and secure. The first and most important passion that pastors, elders, parents, small group leaders, Christians must have is a passion for God. He is the goal of our faith. We must have a passionate love for him, trust in him, fear of him and hope in him if we are going to inspire others to follow. Christian leaders are full of passion for God and for…II. TruthWe will spend most of our time next week talking about Paul’s passion for communicating truth and what that’s supposed to look like in elders, pastors and parents. I want to quote something that John Piper says in his book, “A Godward Life”, that I think captures Paul’s passion. “Our concern with truth is an inevitable expression of our concern with God. If God exists, then he is the measure of all things, and what he thinks about all things is the measure of what we should think. Not to care about truth is not to care about God. To love God passionately is to love truth passionately. Being God centered in life means being truth-driven in ministry. What is not true is not of God. What is false is anti-God. Indifference to the truth is indifference to the mind of God.” Paul was not indifferent to the truth. He was taken up with true thinking about God and true talking about God. We live in the midst of a culture that says you cannot know what is true about God. We live in the midst of a society, both secular and in the church that says to be dogmatic about truth, especially religious truth is arrogant, divisive and evil. Therefore, if you are going to be passionate about truth you are going to invite the suspicion and scorn of the people you live around. However, to not care about the truth is to declare that you do not care about God and to set yourself in opposition to him. Ultimately, to not care about whether or not you and your children are learning the truth of God is not to care about whether you go to heaven or to hell. Christian leaders are full of passion for God, for Truth and for… III. PeopleLook with me at v. 31. Paul says that for three years he never stopped warning each one of the Ephesians, night and day, with tears. I want you to notice two things, Paul spent personal time with each one of the Ephesians and when he was with them, he cried as he warned them. In Phil. 3:17 he says, “As I have often told you before and now say again, even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” The apostle Paul’s heart broke over the lost condition of individuals. Paul often wept both privately and while engaged in the work of persuading men and women, boys and girls to flee from the coming wrath. Paul had a personal concern for each person that God placed under his care. As he contemplated the danger that each person was in, the wrath that was hanging over their heads, the necessity of them turning from sin and fleeing to Christ, he was moved to talk with them personally and to do so, not in an arrogant, commanding way but with tears, with a heart filled with compassion and passion for their eternal well-being. Eugene Peterson, in one of his books, talks at great length about how pastors view the people in their congregations. He astutely points out that pastors naturally view the people in their congregations either as hindrances to their work or as tools to be used in the work. When you define your work as “reaching the community for Christ” or “building the church” then the people with problems become a distraction from the work and the people who don’t have problems become tools to be used to accomplish the work. However, as Peterson points out, people are the work. I’ll never forget the first time I read Peterson’s book, I was meeting with a student, a bright, good-looking, spiritually minded student who told me that he wanted to reach his dorm for Christ. We made a plan together and then would meet each week to see how it was going. He didn’t do anything that we agreed to and I found myself getting angry with him. Why was I angry? He wasn’t helping me to do my job. My job was to reach the campus for Christ and he was not helping me do it. Mercifully, God gave me the gift of repentance and I was able to change my focus and engage in the work of loving him for the sake of Christ. Not only pastors and elders have a problem with viewing people as hindrances to or tools in getting something done. I think everyone in here sees others in one of these two ways. I know that every parent is guilty of this. Parents, isn’t it true that the reason you are angry with your children is because they are interfering with your vision of life? They aren’t helping you live in an ordered home or they aren’t letting you enjoy the things you want to enjoy? Don’t you often use them to fulfill your dreams of being loved or successful or popular? When your children exhibit sinful tendencies don’t you get angry with them, rather than weep over them? Why do we get angry? Anger simply shows that our children are not cooperating with our vision of happiness. They are hindering our goals. You would weep over your children if your goal was their eternal joy. Last week, I was troubled all Sunday afternoon with something I said in the sermon. At one point I was talking to those who are not yet Christians and I said something that is true. I said that God hates those who are outside of Christ and that he is storing up wrath against them for the Day of Judgment. As I thought about what I said, I found two things troubling me. First, I was worried about whether people would still like me, after I said such a hard thing. I feared the disapproval of others rather than fearing God. Second, I was and am troubled that I can talk about such terrible realities and not weep for those who are outside of Christ. Where are the tears? How can I speak of such awful dangers and not cry for those who are in such terrible danger? The prophet Jeremiah says, “Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed. My eyes will flow unceasingly, without relief, until the Lord looks down from heaven and sees.” And “But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly overflowing with tears, because the Lord’s flock will be taken captive.” On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 men did not consider their lives worth anything as long as they finished their course and completed the task assigned to them by Allah. The nineteen men who flew four jetliners full of travelers into office buildings full of workers, were full of love for Allah, trust in Allah’s promises, hope in Allah’s reward. These men were passionate for the truth that Allah teaches. Because of their passion for Allah, they killed their enemies. Elders, pastors, parents, Christians who are angry and judgmental towards the sins of others, have far more in common with the false religions of this world than they do with the religion of Jesus Christ. Love for Allah produces men who give away their lives to kill the enemies of their god. Love for Jesus Christ produces men and women who give away their lives to love the enemies of God. Love for Allah produces hatred and anger towards the infidels and the rebellious. Love for Christ produces compassion and tears and risk taking for sinners who are in danger of wrath. Our suffering love for others sets us apart from the false religions of this world. Christian leaders are full of passion for God, for Truth and for People. 2 Thess 1: 11-12 ©
Copyright 2002 John Swanson.
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