What is your attitude concerning pastors, who are overseers, who are shepherds, who are elders, who are stewards of God? It better be the attitude that God wants from you.
God Wants Me to Appreciate Pastors, and Esteem Them Very Highly in Love
1 Thessalonians 5:12-13
(Children's Sheet for Sermon Interaction is at bottom. Notes are throughout sermon)
Please turn to 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13. As you are turning there, I want us to consider how wonderful it is to be followers of a perfect leader. Christ is our great King in the New Covenant. He is Lord of the church, He is the One who calls us out of the world in a command that He enables us to obey, and we come forth by His mighty power. When our great Leader began forming the church, He called out men that He made into disciples. He sent them out as apostles to establish His church as authorities under Him. In Ephesians 2:20, Paul says that God's household has been built upon the foundation of the apostles. Only God gives this kind of authority to men. Paul demonstrated this kind of authority when he said,
"I direct in all the churches," 1 Corinthians 7:7
The same apostles, by the authority of God, in the Spirit, taught principles of church government under Christ, where God calls and establishes ministers as authorities under Him, and His word, by the Spirit. God laid these things out for the church for all generations. The church today, is built on the foundation laid by Christ; then through the apostles, and it continues the God ordained legacy of ministers called out for ministry in God's churches as pastors. Paul's foundation, given by the Lord, directs us today. Paul says that anyone who is spiritual must recognize that the words he wrote are in fact,
"the Lord's commandment." 1 Corinthians 14:37
The command is from the higher authority, through the lower authority, which means it is authority ordained by the Lord. Paul's says in 2 Thessalonians
"14 If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him, so that he will be put to shame." 2 Thessalonians 3:14
Paul speaks about authority in our passage this morning. Please read it with me,
"12 But we request of you, brothers, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, 13 and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work." 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13
Please prepare your heart to learn, along with me, from the preaching of God's word, in this sermon titled,
God Wants Me to Appreciate Pastors, and Esteem Them Very Highly in Love
[prayer]
Paul has just explained that whether we are awake or asleep, someday we will be with the Lord forever. Then Paul moves into our section with more teaching on living out love. He starts a fresh push toward Christian conduct. At verse 12, we get the sense of a kind of plea. It calls for both our attention, and a positive response that must be nothing less than eager obedience. It is part of solid discipleship for the God ordained health of the church. He says,
"12 But we request of you, brothers, ..." 1 Thessalonians 5:12
"We" in this sentence, are the apostles with the authority. The authority is making a request on behalf of God in an intimate kind of personal connection in this appeal. In the Greek, this request is softer than a command, and yet it is stronger than a mere plea. It is an appeal to the family to do what they should be doing. So we also see Paul using our family language again. Paul is showing our personal connection as brothers and sisters in Christ. He uses the word that means siblings. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are the family of God--joint heirs in the Son. We are spiritual equals, and we are all equally connected in Christ as the body of Christ--the church. Every family has a father. Our church family has a Father. Paul mentions our Father in 1:1,
"... To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:" 1 Thessalonians 1:1
So the apostles are making a request on behalf of our Father. It is to the family, which is the church, and so we, the family, the church, need to do what Paul is urging. This is the feel of the exhortation that the Spirit is pushing; and so Paul goes on,
"12 But we request of you, brothers, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction," 1 Thessalonians 5:12
Paul's big doing emphasis is specific appreciation backed by specific action. It is a special kind of God-ordained recognition, acknowledgment, and response, to certain people. Now the question for us, is;
Who exactly is Paul talking about in his request for appreciation?
It is a probing question that needs to be explored, because, after all, we are always called to manifest the love of Christ to all of our brothers and sisters, aren't we? God wants you and me to appreciate every member of the body. You should thank God for every one. We should,
"3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others." Philippians 2:3-4
@1 As a Christian, God wants me to regard others as being more_______________ than myself. (Philippians 2:3)
So, we realize that we are urged to express love to all our brothers and sisters in Christ. We know that we are supposed to build up one another in the Lord. The Bible lays out various ways that we are supposed to manifest this love in action. But Paul has specific people in mind in this particular call for our focused appreciation. They are people in the church who have three distinct characteristics, and all of those characteristics are the qualifications of elders, who are overseers, who are shepherds, who are pastors, who are stewards of God. In the Bible, when you read of elders, and when you read of overseers, and shepherds, and pastors, you are reading about the same people. Here in our text, Paul gives three characteristics that describe these specific people. Notice that Paul says,
/1/
"12 But we request of you, brothers, that you appreciate those who labor among you, ..."
The first characteristic is that they are men who labor among the church. Big point:
A pastor is not a pastor unless he is laboring.
Taking on the name of pastor, and then doing nothing means that your tag means nothing. Also, to be a pastor, you must be identified as one from qualifications found in 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1. And then there is what pastors do. There are people who claim to be pastors, and they are everywhere doing all kinds of things, but they are unbiblical things. People may claim to be pastors all they want to, but unless they are doing the specific work that God prescribes in the Scriptures, then they are not doing Biblical pastoring. They are doing something else. They might be doing labor things, business things, organizational things, talking and visiting things, but if it is not according to the mandates of God then they are merely spinning their earthly wheels. They are just doing executive, and social worker, kinds of stuff. You are not supposed to appreciate, nor esteem those kinds of people because of their labor. The labor here that Paul is talking about is godly, Biblical, and it is in the area of certain Biblically prescribed spiritual things. And it is the kind of labor that is focused, consuming, and intensely nurtured. This is why the NASB adds the word diligently in connection to labor:
"those who diligently labor among you."
It emphasizes that Paul is referring to intense, studious, focused, work in a full time kind of operation. Contextually, the labor that Paul is talking about is the specific work of pastoral teaching ministry to the body in serving Christ. Paul describes such people as laborers in 1 Timothy;
"The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. Because the Scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,' and 'The laborer is worthy of his wages.'" 1 Timothy 5:17-18
They are laborers, and the hard work that they do is preaching and teaching in their rule. So, if you believe that God has called you into the pastoral ministry, then you must recognize that you are called to be a laborer who labors. You are called to the work of a ministry, and it is not merely a task to accomplish and get out of the way. It is an ongoing work of diligence to the fullest extent, with the high ideals of the Kingdom of God, the defense and proclamation of the truth, the equipping of the saints for the work of service, the correction of the opposition, and much more that is empowered according to the Spirit in respect to the call. This means that you are going to have to study. When you are done studying, you are going to need to study some more. Then you can rest a little before you study some more. You are going to have to understand doctrinal, and theological issues. You are going to have to present the truth regularly in preaching, teaching, and counsel, that is thorough. It is the kind of thoroughness that comes from hard, diligent labor. This is the labor that Paul is talking about, which leads to the next characteristic Paul describes.
/2/
The second characteristic is that they are men who have a specific shepherding and guiding authority in the Lord. Paul says,
2) "12 But we request of you, brothers, that you appreciate those who ... have charge over you in the Lord ..."
This is why Paul says that elders rule in 1 Timothy. In Hebrews, the Spirit tells us that they are leaders to be obeyed because they keep watch over your souls, Hebrews 13:17. In 1 Timothy 3:1, the office of being an overseer of the church is called a fine work. Oversight in spiritual matters of life is the work. Now, in considering this, we realize that the Lord is the Savior, and Head over the church, Ephesians 5:23, Colossians 1:18. Jesus is the supreme authority. This is why pastors have charge over the local church, but only in the Lord. Outside the Lord, men should be barred from attempting to lead the church. They are not even part of the church. Outside the Lord, they are usurping the Lord's authority as true stewards. There are men who claim to be pastors and they aren't submitting themselves to the Lord, which is bad; but what is worse, is that there are a lot of men who claim to be pastors, and they aren't even Christians. They are not in the Lord to begin with, and so they will exercise charge over people in cults like Jehovah Witness groups, or Mormon groups; and even among main stream Christian denominations. Such unsaved men will actually lead groups of Christians in local church fellowships. John Bunyan had done this. He was the man who wrote Pilgrim's Progress. He was a pastor for years, but he says he wasn't saved until later. A man I know of used to be the youth pastor at a large mega-church in San Antonio. The whole time, he explains that he wasn't even saved. There are men who claim to be homosexual pastors, or that the Bible is not really God's word, or that it is filled with errors, or that it is outdated, or culturally irrelevant for our spiritual guidance; or they claim that there is more than one way to be saved. It comes as a shock to a lot of folks to find out that some big name pastors have heretical beliefs. For example, they will make the anti-Christ statement, that other people who worship false gods will be saved because they were sincere in their worship. When they believe this, they are not believing something that is in the Lord. They are believing something that is outside the Lord. A man in Houston, who has charge over one of the largest masses of people, called a church, in the world, believes that Jesus Christ is not the sole and only way to be saved. He admitted it on an internationally syndicated talk show. A man here in San Antonio, who has charge over about just as many people worldwide through media, also believes that apostate Jews, who reject Jesus as the Messiah, are actually worshipping the One true God. He wrote it in a book recently. He also says that the Jews did not reject Jesus as Messiah. Jesus, and Paul, on the other hand, say that apostate Jews do not worship God, demonstrated in the fact that they actually reject Christ as a fact. All these men claim to be pastors who operate in the Lord, yet such heresies are not promoting the exclusiveness of salvation solely in the Lord. The Greek word for Lord, as Paul uses it, means Master of the church. Foundationally, Biblical pastors are in the Master. Paul says in Ephesians 5:23 that Christ is the head of the church. Paul says,
"It is the Lord Christ whom you serve." Colossians 3:24
@2 As a Christian, I ______________ the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3:24)
Everyone in the church serves the Lord--even those who labor among it with charge in the Lord. In the Lord, the Lord gives the authority, and it is authority that is governed by Him. Christ is the one who gives some as pastors who are teachers to equip the body for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ, Ephesians 4:11-12. It may look like man is who invented all of this, or who does this as a human enterprise, but it is God's enterprise. The Holy Spirit is the power person. He is the one who sets apart His pastors, and makes them what they are for His purposes,
"... the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." Acts 20:28
@3 God purchased all of us who believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, with His own _________________, as Jesus. (Acts 20:28)
So, keeping these things in mind, every man who thinks they are called by God to be a pastor, needs to recognize that God's word has both the instructions for what it means to have proper charge, and it has the examples that God has recorded. Take for example, the various Biblical names in the New Testament for those who are called to this. Each name has a background that describes the actual role. Elder is one. Elder is an English word translated from the Greek word, presbuteros. Presbyterians get their name from it. It describes their leadership, which is called the presbytery. Presbuteros, or elder, was a label used among Old Covenant Israelites before being used in the church. Presbuteros is one of those words that has more than one meaning in a broad semantic range, but there is a narrowed meaning for the church. Presbuteros can mean, "an older man." But, it also has this definition that refers to an overseer. A good analogy is found in the usage of the Greek words for shepherds, and pastors. Both are words that describe overseers in the church, but both those words started out meaning men who had oversight over flocks of sheep. Before Presbuteros was used in the church context, it was known as an official title of spiritual leaders in the Jewish community. It was used for the leadership of Jerusalem. It was used for the leadership in the synagogues. Later the term was adopted by the church from the title of the office of presbuteros in the Jewish synagogue.
It is important for us to know that simply being an old man does not qualify someone to be an elder in God's church, in the same way that being a sheep herder does not qualify someone to be a shepherd or pastor in the church.
God has given lists of spiritual qualifications for helping us identify elders who are set apart by the Spirit to be overseers. Another Biblical word is overseer. Overseer comes from the Greek, episcopos which means "one who over sees." The Episcopal churches take their name from this Greek word. The word is also translated as bishop. A bishop is an overseer. In the New Covenant church context, an overseer oversees the church in respect to spiritual matters. He oversees the church in respect to God's word in proper preaching - teaching, counsel, example, and the exercise of church discipline. An overseer and an elder are the same thing. Paul says to Titus,
"... set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you, namely, if any man is above reproach, ... because the overseer must be above reproach as God's steward." Titus 1:5, 7
Paul calls elders, overseers. We see the same thing in Acts 20:17-28, where Paul,
"17... sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church. ... he said to them ... 28 Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd [to pastor] the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." Acts 20:17, 28
Elders and overseers are the same thing and they do the same labor. They shepherd. The same thing is found in 1 Timothy 3:1, and 5:17. Paul says of the official capacity,
"if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do ..." 1 Timothy 3:1
Then, in the same context, Paul equates overseers with elders when he gets deeper into what the fine work entails,
"The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching." 1 Timothy 5:17
Isn't it enlightening to see how these words are used?
It helps to understand our passage. Another Biblical word is shepherd, which is also a pastor. This comes from the Greek word Poimen. The verb form of poimen, is poimainein, and it means "to shepherd' "to guide" and "to feed." Just knowing what this word means, helps us to understand that a shepherd's task is to guide people to eat from God's word.
"Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd [to pastor poimainein] the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." Acts 20:28
Peter says,
"Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight" 1 Peter 5:1-2
Shepherding entails teaching and preaching the nourishment of God's word for spiritual food in respect to proper doctrine. Then there are God's stewards. The household steward of Paul's day was the one the master gave charge over the other servants of the household. When the master was away, the steward would guide the household with authority given by the master until the master returned. So, we see that elders, who are overseers, who are shepherds, who are pastors, who are God's stewards, are all the same people Biblically. Understanding the definitions, gives us a good picture of what God means, and so it helps us to know what it means to appreciate these people in the Lord. But by the same token there are things that all these words do not mean. For example, a shepherd's job is not to dictate to people what he thinks they should do with the comprehensive details of their lives. A pastor's oversight is in the church in respect to spiritual fellowship and Biblical teaching and preaching that builds up and equips people to understand doctrine, godly morals, and live the Christian life according to New Covenant revelation. But Biblically, his ministry is not meant to be the job manager of you and your family. A pastor is also not a deacon. Biblically, a deacon is a servant of the church who is ordained to take care of meeting, scheduling, and other ceremonial and organizational matters of the group. In the Bible, we also find that sometimes deacons were messengers between churches. A lot of folks want their pastor to be a deacon, but that is not his role. Also, a pastor's leadership is not like being a professional business man. Pastors are not running a company. A lot of pastors get the wrong impression that this is what they are called to do, but it is worse when the people in the church think this is what the pastor's role is. Bad discipleship, and worldly philosophy, is what fosters these things in our culture. None of it is Scriptural. Another wrong way to operate in the ministry of pastor is in something called the "shepherding movement." The shepherding movement occurred years ago. There are still some churches that practice elements of it today. It started as an experiment in comprehensive leadership. It quickly became an oppressive method of control. It got out of hand because shepherds were being looked to for practically every decision that a person, or family, would make. In fact, pastors that got into this, became oppressive. You couldn't buy a car without the pastors permission. But those items are not the business of the shepherd of God. God has not called me to control your lives. Such control is one of the signs of a cult. The individual lives of people outside of spiritual and Biblical matters of principle and precept, are personal matters that are outside of the shepherds Biblical responsibility of spiritual guidance. This was why the whole movement failed. It was unbiblical to begin with. Every Pastor must fight the tendency to go beyond the Biblical mandate for what their labor entails. Then there is another problem; Pastors assert their own wills as if it is God's will that is outside the parameters set up in Scripture. They lord over people, instead of guiding people biblically in loving oversight. This is why Peter says,
"I exhort the elders among you ... shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight ... not as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock." 1 Peter 5:1-3
If an elder is teaching the sound doctrine of love, and how to be a godly example, and is also proving to be a godly example of love and sound doctrine, then he is doing his job. They should be appreciated for this, and held in high esteem. Another problem that is seen today is that pastors (who are God's stewards), are operating in churches like the church is a secular institute. They may or not get appreciated for this, but this is not the point. The point is that the church itself, is treated like an agency, or an operation where the minister is the department head, the president, or CEO, or like some kind of market manager who is trying to stay on the cutting edge to make consumers and members happy. Pastors are treated like entrepreneurs who are forced to meet the so called "felt needs" of what others want to define as "relevance"--yet God is the One Who defines what is relevant. But the Pastor is oftentimes expected to do everything, as a deacon, in respect to organizational issues that are not spiritual concerns to be addressed with preaching and teaching the word of God to equip the body and change lives. In fact, a lot of folks subconsciously think of pastors like psychology therapists, or social workers, and all of these kinds of things. Pastors should counsel people, based upon the precepts of the word, but they are not psychology therapists. But the worst one is the business owner treatment. It is when people won't talk about our fellowship, or my church, or Bridgeway Bible Church, Or Main Street Baptist Church, or something like that. They will refer to the church as Pastor Smith's church, or Joe's church, or whoever is the Pastor, like he is a business owner, and the church is his property. In the final analysis of these kinds of trends, it is a travesty today that pastors are being forced by modern neo-traditional schemes to compete with other churches and overseers to try and appease a generation of cultural Christians. This is why I am always urging everyone to stay in biblical Christianity. I need to stay there too. Once the trends get started and take root, it is hard to stop them from growing. Misplaced appreciation gets planted there too. This leads to the third characteristic,
/3/
"12 But we request of you, brothers, that you appreciate those who ... give you instruction, 13 and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work."
@4 God calls pastors, in the Lord, to give me __________________ based on the Bible. (1 Thessalonians 5:12)
When Paul says, "give you instruction," Paul is talking about the main, consistent, work of the pastor. This is his job in serving God. When Paul says, "give you instruction," Paul is talking about giving you, the church family--giving the household of God, teaching in respect to the truth. Paul says concerning pastors and deacons,
"I am writing these things to you, ... so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth" 1 Timothy 3:15
@5 The church of the living God is the pillar, and support of the _______________, from the Spirit, through the Bible. (1 Timothy 3:15)
The pastors' organized place of ministry, is the church. This leads us to consider something that is very matter of fact about anyone who thinks they are called to be a pastor--
If you can't teach, then you are not a pastor.
If you can't teach, then you are not an elder.
If you can't teach, then you are not an overseer.
If you can't teach, then you are not a steward of the household of God.
It is that simple. This is one of the main requirements of elders. They must be able to teach. We read,
"An overseer, then, must be ... able to teach," in 1 Timothy 3:2
"The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching." 1 Timothy 5:17
"7 For the overseer must be ... 9 holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict." Titus 1:7-9
"The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him." Galatians 6:6
In Galatians 6:6 the one who teaches is the pastor. We are commanded to share all good things with such ministers, which contextually means financial provision, which leads us to the next part of Paul's request,
"13 and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work." 1 Thessalonians 5:13
Again, Paul's big emphasis is appreciation backed by action. At this point, I want us to ask the question:
Why does God want us to do all of this?
Certainly, there is a certain element of decency in civil respect, and so common respect for people would make sense; but even though this is the case, this is not what Paul is talking about. The reason we are supposed to esteem those who labor among us in the pastoral ministry, is, first and foremost, because it is requested by God to do so. This is the most important thing to get set in our hearts. God says, "do it," and that settles it. But at the deeper level, part of the reason is because God's called ministers are gifted, and doing this labor, (once again) in the Lord;
"12 ... appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord ... esteem them very highly in love ..." 1 Thessalonians 5:12
Okay, we already talked about being in the Lord, which means you are saved, and in the Spirit. But what I am getting at here, is that this simply means that such men are serving the Lord as those who are empowered and called to do so by Him--for Him. This is key. He wants them. It is His will. So, this puts what they are doing in the spiritual realm that is very important to our God. It is important to God in how He is operating in this world. Pastors are ministering in the Lord, from the Lord, unto the Lord Himself, with their lives, ambitions, focus, care, and love in what they are doing for His church--the body. What they are doing is of great spiritual consequence and has eternal, lasting, value to our God who designed all of it for His glory. This is a reason for appreciation and high esteem. Another reason is because of their work they are doing for the Lord, from the Lord,
"12 ... appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord ... esteem them very highly in love because of their work." 1 Thessalonians 5:12
I can not tell you how many times I have run into professed Christians who speak of God's called out ministers with an edge of contempt. Their hearts have the stench of snide, sinful, snobbery. In sin, they hold the office of pastor in contempt for all kinds of personal reasons. There are others who base their contempt upon twisting scriptures to prove some kind of novel philosophy concerning God's classification of His ministers. Then, in sin, they hold the pastor in contempt and disdain for his intense biblical desire to fulfill his calling to be a pastor who is showing his love for God and the body. But the critics care nothing of the diligent labor, love, and fruit that God produces through His servants. They care nothing of God's special usage of that person, where God personally has chosen Him for the particular work; has anointed him, and has to listen to those other minority mavericks mouth off their philosophies against God's sovereign call. Those complainers, who will be judged more strictly, according to James 3:1, don't care about the changed lives, and beautiful fruit that God has produced through the pastor's service. Such critics are shameful, sinful, and divisive. They are haters. They are attackers of God's ordained will for each church in each generation. They lack the love of this passage, and so they are in sin in their hate. As such, they have the hypocritical belief that they are called to pseudo-pastor people with their own malcontent, demonstrated in the fact that they spread their virus, and vitriol, to others like personal shepherds of God's will; but they loathe it when others (who are called by God) build up the body in true power and labor among the church as biblically qualified, diligent, focused, God honoring, pastors. It is almost like they are jealous, or are in competition; but they will tell you otherwise. They will posture themselves as pious protectors of the church in our age--as overseers, who are against the laboring pastors who are actually edifying the body. I've seen these people come and go in just about every Christian circle I have been in for any length of time. What they think is spiritual power in their own so-called maverick shepherding ministry is really impotence when it comes to building up the church in the full counsel of God; yet their divisiveness is true power in the hands of the devil who uses them as ignorant tools in his hands. This is so serious to God that He says that we shouldn't even make an accusation against a pastor without at least two or three witnesses; 1 Timothy 5:19. Listen to me very carefully, Pastors who are seeking to guide according to the word of God, are not perfect, (They are perfect in Christ); but they are not perfect in every thought and action. But it doesn't matter. God never said a pastor had to be perfect in every thought and action. But those who are seeking to labor in the truth to spread the truth, and build up the body out of love, as men who have charge over local churches, are to be appreciated as those who diligently labor among you, and to be esteemed very highly in real, authentic, action based, love. Which leads to the fact that we do this because we do it in Christian love. This a huge point, because this has to do with the love that God spread abroad in our hearts, and it has to do with manifesting the law of Christ. We do this on two fronts: We appreciate those who diligently labor among us, and esteem them very highly in
1) love for our God,
and we appreciated, and esteem them very highly in
2) love for them in their work.
This covers all aspects of the New Covenant Law.
All of us need to be careful in our day and culture. We need to fight against the trend where leadership (in just about any form) is not something that is generally appreciated. I have to fight it too. Individualism and pride has had a sickening effect upon the body of Christ, and we are not immune to it. I have seen it hit and hurt God's work before, in lack of love, and it is an affront to God, His word, and the people He has called. The church in our culture, to a great degree, is filled with too many segmented loners who have superficial fellowship, and they are self servingly ambitious. Their actions show what they really think,
"My Christian walk is all about what I want. After all, I am the one walking it, and besides, I have Christ in me too."
It sounds deep, but it is shallow. This shallow view of Christianity throws out, or completely distorts most of the New Testament. But, here is the odd thing about this trend--many of these people know a whole lot of verses from the Bible, especially the ones they want to think bolster their opinions, but the infecting fruit they produce hurts the body in direct rebellion to God's word. They do not manifest appreciation for those who diligently labor among us, and esteem them very highly in love of God, and in love of their brothers. It is all a manifestation of a phenomena in our times, where people think their Christianity is all about what they want it to be. One of the jobs of a hard working pastor, is to preach that your Christianity is not all about you, or about what you want it to be, and it might make you mad, but in the end, the mighty sword of the Spirit is going to do it's work. We must see the body as a whole organism with a structure that was designed by God, according to the way He wants it to be. When it comes to committed fellowship, and commitment to a pastor, there are Christians who are always consumer transients passing through and then moving on to something else. In our context, there are some questions that will help us evaluate our own attitudes:
Am I acting like I don't need pastors?
Am I showing the carnal tendency to not show the appreciation and high esteem for pastors that God wants?
Do I appreciate and highly esteem my own pastor?
(How are you going to appreciate your pastor, if you are not committed to a church fellowship and the other members in humbleness to begin with? Who is the pastor that God wants you to appreciate and esteem?)
Am I entertaining partial truths that reject the rest of what God says by tritely thinking,
Jesus is my only pastor.
I am led by the Spirit, and not by anyone else who is led by the Spirit.
Jesus is the only one who deserves any kind of appreciation and high esteem from me.
This is the kind of stuff coming out the Bible hating world culture today. Let's follow what the Spirit says about elders, who are overseers, who are shepherds, who are pastors, who are stewards of God, who labor among us. Let us manifest the love that God requests. Let's be careful. It is easy to fall into the trap of discord. We can get off balance on this by going to one extreme and viewing spiritual leaders as dictators. The other extreme is to take a truth and bend it, like for example, the fact that every Christian is a priest according to the royal priesthood of God. This beautiful truth has been hammered into a mangled piece of evidence to prove that we don't need to recognize Pastors, appreciate Pastors, hold them in high esteem, or submit to them. Both extremes are unbiblical. They don't do anything but cause problems for the church of Jesus Christ. What God is requesting is that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work, period. Pastors are human, and that means that they will fail. But, when our attitude of appreciation is in love, then we will value and esteem them beyond their short comings. We need to do this for our pastors, and pastors need to do this with the rest of the body too.
@1 As a Christian, God wants me to regard others as being more_______________ than myself. (Philippians 2:3)
@2 As a Christian, I ______________ the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3:24)
@3 God purchased all of us who believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, with His own _________________, as Jesus. (Acts 20:28)
@4 God calls pastors, in the Lord, to give me __________________ based on the Bible. (1 Thessalonians 5:12)
@5 The church of the living God is the pillar, and support of the _______________, from the Spirit, through the Bible.
@5 The church of the living God is the pillar, and support of the _______________, from the Spirit, through the Bible. (1 Timothy 3:15)
