Shepherding the Flock

SERMON: 2017-11-12--ac17187--shepherding-the-flock SOURCE DURATION: 00:46:36.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with the speaker setting up the context for the sermon (introduction/review of previous material). The content remains expository and pastoral throughout until segment [440], which concludes the main message before a long silence. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I want to pick up this morning then where we left off last week and for the past number of weeks. We've been looking at Paul's farewell speech to the elders of Ephesus. Just to put it in context again, Paul is on his way home on his third missionary journey. He has revisited all the churches that he established in his first and second missionary journeys. He had planned to sail home from Corinth, got wind of plots of the Jews against him. So he decided to backtrack to Troas and now he is in the seaport of Miletus, which is close to Ephesus. He has invited the elders from Ephesus to join him and in Acts chapter 20, he is giving his farewell speech to them. And that's where we pick it up again this morning, reading from Acts chapter 20, the verses 25 to 31. Paul speaking, he says, "Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. Therefore I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will or counsel of God. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock, even from your own number. Men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard. Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears." He says, "Be on your guard." Let's pray together. Again, Lord, as we turn to your word and look at a passage that is significantly relevant to all of us as a community here, I pray that you give me the words that I need to share your word with clarity and authority and power. And I pray, Lord, that that word will find fertile soil in each of our hearts. I'll lodge there, spring to life, grow up, bear fruit, to the end, Lord, that this community as the church of the Lord Jesus will not only remain faithful to the Lord Jesus but also faithful to its calling, filled with the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, serving as light to the world and salt to the earth. And we'll be careful to give you the glory through Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Well, we saw last week that Paul's concern in addressing these Ephesian elders is that his imminent departure would create a leadership vacuum and that into that leadership vacuum there would come people who would have destructive tendencies towards the flock. And that is why he says to them in Acts chapter 20, the verses 29 to 31, "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them, so be on your guard." Savage wolves are predators, we saw, that come in from the outside. They came in many different forms. They would include persecution from both Gentiles and Jews. They would include false prophets and false apostles and false brethren. And Jesus has constantly warned us against that. He says to his disciples before he sends them out in Matthew 7, "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves." Watch out says Paul, "Savage wolves will come among you, not sparing the flock." But perhaps even worse than wolves from the outside are people from within the community, he says, that are going to distort the truth and who are going to try to fragment the body by building a series of followers who follow their heresies. And I pointed out last week that the early church for the first couple of centuries really had constantly struggled with two heresies in particular, legalism and gnosticism. Legalism said you have to observe the law, the ceremonial law of Moses, even though you belong to Jesus, you must be circumcised, you must keep the feast days and all of this kind of thing. Legalism says the body, the physical world doesn't matter, you get redeemed from it by having a special gnosis or knowledge. Both of those were profound heresies, they continue in varying forms in the world today and they need to be resisted, says Paul, at all costs. Here's how he puts it, writing to the Galatians about the matter of circumcision and the Judaizers who were encouraging circumcision among Gentile believers, he says, "This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you." So here's the question, in light of the fact that there are savage wolves who want to plunder the flock and in light of the view that there are misguided individuals sometimes arising from within Christian communities who want to introduce heretical belief systems and build their own following, how can the Church of God be protected, particularly in the absence of a strong leader like was the Apostle Paul? And the answer, of course, is by raising up local leaders who can properly shepherd the people of God. Listen, how Paul puts it, Acts chapter 20 verse 28, "Keep watch over yourselves," remember he's speaking to the elders of the Ephesian church, "Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers be shepherds of the Church of God, which he bought with his own blood." There are three things in that single verse that I want us to focus on in the time that we have this morning, and the first is that the church belongs to God. Listen again, "be shepherds of the Church of God, which he bought with his own blood." Now there has been a lot of discussion over the years whether the correct translation is Church of God or Church of the Lord. Ancient manuscripts support both sides of the fence. The overwhelming evidence today leads to the translation that we find here in the NIV, Church of God, which he bought with his own blood. That's kind of an odd combination because it was the Lord who shed his blood, not God the Father. For our purposes it doesn't matter a lot because what really matters is that the church belongs to God because it has been bought, as we'll see in a moment, at a very expensive price. To be the church is to be the called out people of God. Out of all the people of the world are people who belong to God. I've always loved the way Peter puts it, "You're a chosen people, a royal priesthood." You've heard me quote this verse many times, "A holy nation, a people belonging to God. That you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." The Heidelberg Catechism in Lord's Day 21 puts it this way, "What do you believe concerning the holy Catholic Church?" And remember the word Catholic means universal. It doesn't mean Roman Catholic. It means, "What do you believe concerning the universal church?" This is one of the phrases from the Apostles Creed which is being covered in the Heidelberg Catechism in this section. And the answer is, "I believe that the Son of God, through his spirit and word, out of the entire human race from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community I am and always will be a living member." To belong to the church is to belong to God. God created the whole world. All the people in that sense belong to him, but the world is sold out to Satan. And the church is a people that have been called back to God and they have been purchased at a very high price, namely the blood of Jesus. We read in the book of Revelation, "With your blood you purchase men for God from every tribe and language in people and nation." That's known as the ransom theory of the atonement. And what it means is that while God originally created the whole world, in Adam's sin we all sold out to Satan and Satan gained legal ownership of the whole human race, which is why the Bible describes him in the New Testament as the God of this world. For us to be redeemed we had to be bought back, and we were bought back at the cost of the blood of Jesus, that is to say, his death on the cross, the shedding of his blood broke the power of Satan over the human race and enabled us to be restored to God. And Paul's point about all of this here is that we are incredibly valuable because we were bought at an unbelievably high price. We need to understand that, you're no longer your own, you belong to Jesus because he laid down the ultimate price so that you could sit here this morning and call yourself a Christian and know that you belong to God and all the promises of God that he made to his people apply to you because of faith in Jesus. It also means, it also means that destroying the church, as in savage wolves and whatever else, false prophets, false apostles, false teachers, is an extremely serious business because you're touching the apple of God's eye. Paul puts it this way, 1 Corinthians 3, 17, "If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, for God's temple is sacred and you are that temple." The reference there, of course, is to the Babylonians, destroying the temple of God. God had raised the Babylonians up to punish the Israelites because of their disobedience, but then they went way over the top and Babylon ultimately got punished for destroying the dwelling place of God. And it's very sobering to think that anybody who serves as a savage wolf or an insider who wants to destroy the unity of God's people comes under the judgment of God because God values his, do you understand this warning, how valuable you are to God because you have been purchased at a very high price. The church belongs to God and he's very jealous of his people. Not only that, but because the church belongs to God and he's very jealous for his people, God has chosen to look after the church and guess how he does that. One of the ways in which he does that is by providing leaders for Christian community to care for his church. Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with his own blood. Paul is addressing the elders of the Ephesian church because he says you are the overseers of this church. That is to say you are the supervisors of life in community on behalf of Jesus. If Jesus is the great shepherd, the good shepherd, then you are his under shepherd. And the Holy Spirit has raised you up to look after the needs of God's people. Very important to understand that because it's the Holy Spirit then who generates, calls, equips people in the body of Christ with the necessary gifts to hear from God, to love God's people, and to lead God's people into the fullness of God's purposes for them. Overseers are people equipped of God to help unify the body of Christ. Last week we looked at this particular chart, I'll just talk about it really quickly. Every church community, as I said, is composed of different constituencies, that's what each of these numbers and letters represent. The early church had Jew and Gentile, they had huge differences between male and female, free and slave, these were huge social differences. The genius of the church is that God brings people from all of these different constituencies to faith and he makes one body out of them through the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus delegates that job to overseers, which we would call elders, or bishops, or presbyters, the Greek uses all of those words, to bind God's people together as ligaments. And part of the key for the church to grow is to be able to identify those kinds of people whom God raises up, calls by his word and by his spirit, to serve as under-shepherds over the flock of Christ. That's how God protects his people from enemies on the outside and even enemies from the inside. Keep watch over yourselves in the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with his own blood. And it's important then to understand that these leaders are entrusted with a two-fold task. The first task is that they need to keep an eye on their own wives. Keep watch, he says, over yourselves. To keep watch over yourselves is to make sure that you remain in union with Jesus. Remember, you are then under-shepherds over the chief shepherd, you are a steward, you're not an owner, you're doing it on behalf of the boss, and so you need to walk with Jesus, you need to put to death your own sin, you need to live by the Spirit, and your life has to model the kind of life that God is calling the whole community to. Paul writing to Timothy says, "Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers." Churches can only lead others to where they have been themselves, and that's why biblically and historically the standard for those who occupy leadership positions in the church is always higher than just the standard that applies to a given individual or a given member. Because you can't lead if you cannot lead by example, and that's why in a church like this, whenever we go through the nominating process of elders and deacons or other leaders in the church as they get elected, they go through a whole vetting process whereby we try to determine as best we can their maturity in Christ for their leadership position. Doesn't mean people have to be perfect, but the more committed we are to the ways of Jesus and the more mature we are in the ways of Jesus, the safer it is because the last thing you want is leaders in community taking advantage of the flock for their own purposes. They need to represent the Lord Jesus. So these shepherds have responsibility to take a very close look at their lives, but more than that they have the responsibility then to watch over the flock. Keep an eye on the flock. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with his own blood. Now I find it fascinating, Paul is writing or talking to elders of what is essentially an urban church. It's a city church. Ephesus was a huge city. But he reverts back to this agrarian model of shepherding the flock of God and the reason for that is that the image of a shepherd of which Jesus of course is the chief shepherd is an image that runs throughout scripture and really captures what looking after God's people looks like in the day and age. In the time that remains I want to give you four ways in which shepherds are to shepherd the flock and this can apply to people in leadership positions, it applies not just to elders and to deacons or to staff people but any of you that head up a ministry where you have responsibility for people under you, these principles apply. So let me walk you through that as quickly as I can this morning. The first responsibility of a shepherd for his flock is of course feeding the sheep. Psalm 23 captures it really well where David, himself a shepherd, says, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul." I don't know how many of you will remember this but more than 30 years ago when I first arrived here at Maranatha I preached a series of messages in Psalm 23. Anybody still remember that? Sometimes you wonder why I preach but some of you will. It's still one of my favorite series of sermons and in preparation for today I pulled out my sermon notes and I was struck by the profundity of what a simple phrase like this really means because you'll notice the wording, the wording is really interesting, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He makes me lie down in green pastures." Interesting because how do you make a sheep lie down? Well in order for a sheep to lie down there's a number of factors that have to be taken into consideration. The sheep has to be free from fear. The sheep has to be free from the friction that develops within a flock when the budding order becomes part and parcel of who dominates who and the sheep has to be free from pests that trouble it and of course the sheep has to have plenty of food and water. The green pastures refers to the food, the quiet waters refers to the water for the sheep. There are three ways in which sheep in the Middle East would get their water. One would be dew off the grass early in the morning. The Bible often talks about Herman's dew falling in Israel, do you remember that phrase? Well Herman was a mountain in the northern part of Israel that was snow covered and the water vapor from that snow covered mountain would waft down to the southern regions of Israel and settle as dew on the grass. So dew served as one source of water for the sheep, another source obviously would be a dug well and a third would be any pool of water particularly standing pools that sheep could drink out of comfortably. But each of these required significant work on the part of the shepherd, if you want sheep to take advantage of the dew you've got to get up early enough before the dew burns off. If you want them to drink from a well then you've got to make sure there is a well and you've got to get the water out of that well and so on and the same thing with providing the comfort that they needed to lie down in green pasture. So you get here a marvelous picture of what providing for the needs of the flock looks like, creating a safe environment, creating a place where people are at rest, where people aren't attacking each other, where people have food that they need to grow in union with the Lord Jesus Christ and so it is Peter, it's Jesus who says to Peter after his resurrection when he's restoring him, "Feed my sheep." One of the functions of leadership in the church, again across the board, is to provide spiritual food so that people can grow up in Christ into all of the things that he has for them. That's one function of shepherding, a second function of shepherding obviously is guiding the sheep. Psalm 23 goes on, "He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake." Guides of righteousness, sheep like all domesticated animals and those of you that have ever farmed will know this, left to themselves will always follow the same path, they will just walk it into the ground if you will and they will graze in the same area until there is virtually nothing left. Some of you know the story, when we first got my sheep in my youth, as I said before we didn't have proper sheep fencing, we only had barbed wire fencing because we had a cattle operation and a sheep operation and the sheep were constantly getting out of our fields into the neighbor's field. Now our neighbor was a fine wonderful Christian but he'd lose his Christianity a little bit when the sheep got into his field, more than a little bit actually, his dark side really showed up and he'd get on the party line and he'd blast us that our blankety-blank sheep were in his because he was worried they were going to ruin his pasture. Now he exaggerated a little bit but it is true, left alone they will chew the grass and their droppings and whatever else can actually do damage, particularly if there are parasites or diseases, they can do damage to a pasture and so the biblical shepherd by extension, shepherds today, would take the sheep and would fan out from the home place like a clover leaf pattern where you lead the sheep to graze over here, now I'm going to help you to graze over here and now I'm going to help you graze over here. And the picture here is that of leading God's people in paths of righteousness for his name's sake and the New Testament application is obviously is that one of the function of leaders in community, again at whatever level, is to guide God's people by teaching them the truth of God's word, by helping them to walk in the truth of God's word, by challenging and correcting them when they fail so that God's people can leave out what in Christ they really are. Paul writing to Timothy again puts it this way, he says preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season, correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction and Paul says concerning himself and this is the revised standard version, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. One of the tasks of protecting the body and helping it to grow is to model in word and in deed what life in Christ really looks like with a view of leaving out what in Christ we really are. I'll never forget years ago when the church that I pastored, a gentleman came to me terribly frustrated and he said to me, "Why are you always preaching on the third section of the catechism?" And I knew immediately what he was talking about because the third section of the catechism deals with a life of gratitude. If the first section deals with their sin and misery, it's very short, the second section deals with who it is they were in Christ and the third section talks about what that means practically speaking for the Christian disciple. And I knew right away that he was a man who was struggling with who he was, he was struggling with his identity and he didn't know how to be faithful to God in the way that he lived. He was very shame-bound and he just wanted to hear how much God loved him and how his sins were forgiven. He didn't really want to hear that the gospel also was intending to serve for his life to change. As a matter of fact, I've discovered over the years, people in church never get mad at you, hardly, until they discover that you really mean what God says about life changing. And a lot of people don't understand the nature of grace, they come under condemnation because they feel that they have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and somehow be something that they really are not. And my answer to the man, as I recall, was that I spoke about transformed lives because I very deliberately built my preaching ministry on the structure that Paul adopts in some of his major New Testament letters, like the book of Romans, like the book of Ephesians, like the book of Colossians. And the structure in all of those letters is identical. He spends a huge amount of time talking about who Christ is and who it is that we are in Christ. And then he gets about half-ways through his letters and then he changes tone and he marks the transition with the word "therefore." And what he means by that is because all of these things are true of you in Christ, this is what this should look like in the way that you live. And without unduly elaborating on that, let me just talk about it a little bit more because this is so critical for the health of Christian community. Let me put it this way. In Corinthians 5-7 he says, "Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." What he means by that is that if you have come to faith in Jesus, you have become a new person, your old identity has been crucified with Christ, and now you are invited to live out of your new identity and not your old one. We can illustrate it this way. By nature, as you know, we're separated from God, we're under Satan's influence, we're blind as bats, we don't see Jesus, we don't understand Jesus, we think he is irrelevant, we think we're pretty good, we don't need Jesus. Then we come to faith in Christ, we repent of our sins, and by faith in Jesus we become part of God's family, and all the blessings that God has given to Jesus, and you can read about this in the book of Ephesians in particular, now belong to us. In Christ we're seated in heavenly places, in Christ the same power that raised him from the dead now lives in us, in Christ we have become the children of God. We are a new creation, doesn't mean we're leaving that out fully, but we have new potential. And now that we are in Christ and the Holy Spirit works in us under the terms of the new covenant, if we will but listen to the Holy Spirit, if we will but listen to the scriptures when God speaks it into our lives, he will give us both the desire and the ability to put off the old and to put on the new and our lives begin to change, isn't that true? That's the nature of Christian sanctification, that's the power of Christ in us. And the job of any of us that lead or preach or teach is not to lay a load on you that says oh if you don't smarten up you're going to go to hell you bad person you, it's to declare this is your identity. In Christ God loves you, even if you never change God still loves you, but it's inconceivable that you won't change because the Holy Spirit is in you and the Holy Spirit won't let you keep on sinning the way that you were sinning before and if you do he will make life miserable for you and he'll pull the rug out from underneath you and he will discipline you if he has to discipline you, but he will help you become a new person so that you can be made ready for eternity where you're going to be in the very presence of God. We need a little feedback here, a little amen, a little bit of do you get what I'm trying to say? This is how you feed the flock, this is how you guide God's people, you don't try to make them something that they're not, you remind them of who they are in Christ and you resource them, you help them to live that out so that they can become the workmanship that in Christ Jesus they have intended to be. See I like amens, you know if I ever go on preaching after this I'm going to go to a black church where people say amen all the time. We need to move on, they have to feed the sheep, they have to guide God's people and of course they have to protect the flock. Psalm 23 goes on, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me." Now we often talk about the valley of the shadow of death and we talk about people going through the valley before they die and how God has promised to be with them and that's a legitimate interpretation of Psalm 23 but in the Middle East the valley of the shadow of death was a very literal thing because you see the agricultural year was divided into two sections the first section would be winter and spring perhaps into early summer was spent around the home base and the pastures around the home base. As the season went on and that grass was consumed the shepherd would take his sheep onto the high mountain pastures but in order to get there he often had to go through treacherous territory which included valleys and cliffs and great dangers and predators and the valley of the shadow of death was the shepherd shepherding his people through these dark and difficult places to try to bring them into the high mountain pastures where there was still an abundance of of grass and water for the sheep and his job was to protect the sheep during that journey and in order to protect the sheep he had he had two pieces of equipment that were a valuable piece of the shepherd's equipment the first was the rod and the second was the staff the rod was a short stick with a big knob and one end and it served multiple purposes including if a sheep was wandering off you'd throw your club at the sheep to get him to get back in line if a predator was after the sheep the club served as a means of getting him away served a number of other purposes as well but for our purposes that's enough the staff of course was part of his equipment to help the sheep he would guide the sheep with it and if a little lamb got separated from its mother he could pick it up with the crook of his staff and bring it back to its mother because if he touched it with his hands the mother might no longer recognize the sheep and that's why the shepherd's staff always has this crook on it so as to be able to pick the lamb and put it back with its mother so powerful word pictures of how the shepherd protects God's people and all of us who are in leadership positions have that responsibility to the flock we have an obligation to protect God's people because there's a lot of dangers and you know between prayer and intercession and warning and and just disciplining and discipling the community the shepherd has to create a safe environment where people can flourish and be all that God wants them to be well just moving along very quickly to bring this to a close one fourth function that we can talk about and that is the fact that the shepherd also restores or heals the sheep already earlier on in verse 3 we read that very familiar line about he restores my soul and the psalm goes on in verse 25 to talk about he prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies you anoint my head with oil my cup overflows let me talk for just a moment about what it means to restore my soul it sounds you know kind of kind of poetic doesn't that he restores my soul he makes me feel but it actually means a lot more than that because it refers to a condition among sheep called casting casting means that under certain circumstances a sheep will find itself turned upside down and unable to write itself up three reasons why that happens very quickly sometimes the ground is uneven and a sheep will stretch and roll over and before you know it it's got its four feet in the air sometimes it happens because his fleece has gotten too heavy with mud and water and whatever else and he goes topsy-turvy and sometimes he just simply too fat and he ends up with his feet in the air as soon as he is with his feet in the air the sheep of course panics tries to right side put himself right side up and the motion of his pawing feet creates gas in his stomach which now makes it virtually impossible for him to get back up on his feet left alone like that for hours in the heat or days and more moderate climate and the sheep will die so the shepherds job is to keep his eye on the flock and see what sheep has ended up upside down and the moment he finds one he's got to do them right side up restore circulation and enable that lamb or that sheep to recover incredible picture of the healing ministry of Jesus in the body of Christ you can do life with savage wolves and an enemy that is ruthless in trying to destroy our walk with God and not get bit and not get injured and not develop some pretty serious issues and as I've often said the church is full of people who at one point or another walk joyfully with the Lord Jesus ran into trouble whether by their own choosing or by somebody else's choosing and they are out of condition what the good shepherd does is he goes finds the long sheep he binds up their wounds and he heals them so that they can be restored because sheep are valuable to God and to God's people and if you're a leader again whether you're an elder or a deacon or a section leader or a small group leader or just a leader in your own home these are all tasks that God gives us in order to protect our children in order to protect our youth in order to protect the body of Christ and I just want to encourage you going forward that whatever your calling or your task is do it with all your heart because Jesus the good shepherd by his spirit will give you what you need to do the job that you do and then come the day of eternity you will hear those words of the Lord Jesus well done good and faithful servant you've been faithful over little I will put you over much that's God's provision for healthy church life you already have it in you and among you and my hope and prayer is that even as I step aside in the transition and we don't know what the future is going to look like yet because we're still looking for a senior pastor replacement we may depend on our own staff and our own leaders for the short term we're talking to about do we find an interim pastor to tie us over churches often do that but whatever form it takes Jesus is the good shepherd he's given you each of you gifts and abilities it's an opportunity to step forward step into the challenges and the opportunities and you will be amazed at what God can do through Jesus by the power of his Holy Spirit amen [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:46:30.100; remove through 00:46:36.000] [ [CUT]BLANK_AUDIO] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:46:36.000; resume after this marked segment]