Proper Evaluation of Leaders (Part 2)

No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

God is causing the growth through biblical means. That is, we're not trying to mess around and we're not trying to be, you know, foolish and say, you know, we're going to spend more time with sociology and Dewey is our man for church growth.

Pragmatics is what we do, consumerism is what we do, but if we're back to the God-ordained means for growth, prayer, preaching, evangelism, the one and others, if that's what we do and the church balloons up to a thousand or shrinks down to one hundred, it is God causing the growth.

And if God is causing the growth, then who are we to say, well, this is getting too big for me? Well, that may be true, but it's not getting too big or too small for God. So I just want to try to challenge you.

Listen, I'm not trying to make this into a mega church. I'm just trying to be faithful to preach and whether we have a parched time of ten years ago or an exciting, growing time now, they're both ordained by God.

And so God, if you're going to give us a lot of people, then we'll minister to the people. And you who have been here for a long time have enough maturity that you'll be able to minister to those people.

I'm not trying to build a church. Jesus is going to build a church. And why would I want to compete with him, as MacArthur said, that'd be dumb. By the way, when I die, I don't know when I'll die, but don't put some kind of, you know, let's let's it's called the Mike Abendroth wing.

Let's see if we go get that new building. It's really snazzy. Nice. And we're going to call this the Abendroth wing, please. Just put a little tombstone by the grace of God. He preached the word and he was a good servant.

Faithful to the end by the grace of God. That's all we want. I'm not trying to build some kind of dynasty. And if I was, woe is me. This is what we have after 13 years. No, just kidding. But you understand my point.

God causing the growth. The Greek tense is point in time, Paul did something, point in time, Apollos did something. Without a point of time, ongoingly, God is causing the growth. Just like today. Where is he causing all the growth?

Maybe not north of the equator, but lots of growth south of the equator. He's building his church no matter what the world says. I'm glad to be indispensable. I am glad to be insignificant and I'm glad to be replaceable.

If this church falls apart when I die or move or get kicked out, I will grieve and grieve and grieve. I like church growth that says through preaching, through evangelism, through prayer, God grows the church.

New people getting saved and we hear the testimonies in baptism, don't you like that? When you go to the Worcester Common and preach the gospel and you preach the gospel to your kids or you preach the gospel to your friends at work and they get saved and they come to the church, I like that church growth.

But there's another kind of church growth that I don't want to have anything to do with. And that is church growth that says the Bible's good plus. Just mark it in your mind. Whenever you hear the Bible's pretty good, but we need some kind of social and behavior sciences to help us grow the church, it's always a recipe for trouble.

When I drive by a church or I look in the yellow pages, I looked in the yellow pages the other day and the church says, all are welcome, come as you are. One in California said, contemporary music and the youth group won't be boring, sermons are short.

I just don't know what to do with that. I just feel like I'm some kind of old computer or some IBM computer just like will not compute smoke coming out. Of course, come as you are. Of course, you're welcome.

But definitionally, boring and God. See if you could fit those two words in one sentence. With God as a subject. I said to myself, I'm not going to mention names today, so I won't, but I will quote to you one of the number one church growth gurus.

I mean church growth not ordained by God growth, but sociological growth. The music you use positions your church and your community. You will determine the kind of people you attract, the kind of people you keep, and the kind of people you lose.

If you were to tell me the kind of music you're currently using your services, I could describe the kind of people you're reaching without even visiting your church. I could also tell you the kind of people your church will never reach.

Call me old fashioned, but I just want to know, what does it mean when it says God causes the growth? How about we had no music? We'll say, well, you know what? This is an old, dry, dusty book, and if you really want to have people come, you've got to have some drama.

I like drama too. How about Acts 5 drama? That'd be good drama. Ananias and Sapphira steal a little bit. They're killed on the spot. I call that pretty dramatic. Let's see, drama. Let's see, Jesus is going to come back and melt away the entire earth.

There really be a day of global warming, and I'll set up everything rightly. Most drama isn't even any good. It's second rate. The Bible says at a worship service, you preach, you pray, you sing, Lord's Supper, baptism, and the next week you do it all over again, and God, through that, causes the growth.

You know what I say? I say, yes, sir. And if you say, well, I don't really like the music, well, if you sit here long enough, then you'll say to yourself, boy, I sure was immature when I said that, because I was expecting church that was going to fit me.

I was acting like a consumer. I was acting like I had the remote control, and I was going to pick songs that I liked, that I really could feel the Holy Spirit. I mean the bass drum, and I really wanted to make sure I could just do that.

I like emotions. I like passion. I like relevancy. But forgiveness of sins is about the most relevant thing I could ever talk to you about. I'm not purposely trying to make the church boring. See, how can we bore them all the day and see who the elect really are?

But I'm not going to take a survey of you, nor the community, and say, what would you really like in church? Well, let's see, I'd like it if we didn't have to give to the church, but the church could give to us, and there was just a bunch of money on the plate, and just get to take some out.

I'd like to know why no church growth gurus have ever instituted that in their philosophies. One man said, it's not a sin to help people feel good. Maybe it's not. One man said, explosive growth occurs when the type of people in the community match the type of people that are already in the church, and they both match the type of person the pastor is.

Do you really want to be like me? My wife can only take one of me. David Wells hits the nail on the head when he says, this is devastating. When people say, you know, our church is growing, therefore God must be blessing us.

Oh yeah, church is growing. Attendance is up. Buildings are up. Cash is up. Church growth. We're being blessed by God. Well, David Wells says, hauntingly, such success might just as easily be a sign that the church has been willing to prostitute itself by seeking worldly accommodation.

Today we have, the congregant is sovereign, not God. I just saw in the last week, here's the stage, it was a lot bigger stage than this one, and the opening illustration was the pastor standing here with a huge motocross sand thing there, and a motocross sand thing there, and the pastor stood under there and said, okay, there's a guy in the little Kawasaki 125 Enduro.

He's going to jump over me. Do you think he's going to make it? Let's just pray. And up he goes and jumps over him. The guy in the motorcycle does this and twists around a little bit, and then lands. I've seen tanks on, literal U .S. tanks, on the stage, on the platform.

Let's just go back to stage. On the stage, where the guy sits on the platform, excuse me, on the tank, and he's got a pair of jeans on in the Bible, and he comes out on the stage, on the tank, and he's going to introduce his Ephesians 6 spiritual warfare service.

I've seen people sit on a bed with their wife for the worship service to talk about, well, today we're going to kick off the series on Song of Solomon. I have lots of questions, but one of my questions is, what will you do next week?

Because you've got to keep people with what you win them with. You say, well, I'll just change the methods, but I'll keep the message pure. Impossible. When you see online or someplace locally, come to our church.

It's a church like you've never seen before. I'd rather have a slogan, come learn about Jesus like you've never learned him before, from the Bible. Because when you read John chapter 6, you won't say, Jesus thought the customer was sovereign, pragmatics is the best, we'll just preach away, and there'll be lots of people.

Because at the end of John chapter 6, Jesus said, you know what? You just think I'm here to give you food, and you are not my disciples, and they run. One man said, keep your pastoral prayer short in your seeker services.

The unchurched can't handle long prayers. Pastor Dave, did you get that? I like church growth. It is exciting when people are enthusiastically newborn Christians. I love the Lord. Jesus is great. I want to worship him till death do us part.

I'm sold out. I'm evangelizing. I like it. But I like it only when it's ordained by God, through the means of preaching, prayer, evangelism, and how God used weak people like us. And then when somebody gets saved, we don't say, well, I was a lot better debater.

God causes the growth. If you're a youth leader, ask yourself the question, what we do this year, will it be centered on God causing the growth through the instrument of biblical means? And if we get extra kids, because we do something that Dewey says, or Wendell James, or somebody else, we don't want them, because we're here to honor God.

Christ Jesus Will Judge the Leaders

Number five. Number five, the fifth consideration. So you think about things biblically. Leaders biblically, in 1 Corinthians 3, 5 to 9, focus on Christ Jesus, the one who will ultimately judge the leaders, and stop wasting time grading them.

Verse 8. We'll be graded. Of course, you can say, is he biblical or unbiblical? But it goes too far. And look what he says in verse 8. He who plants, no name mentioned, he who waters, no name mentioned, are one.

And each will receive his wages according to his, mark this, success. Isn't that good to know? That if you're successful, God will bless you and tell you, good job, well done, faithful servant. But that's not what the Bible says.

He who plants and he who waters are one. They're not rivals. They each have a role. They're unified. They're not competing. And each one will receive his wages according to his, what? Labor. That's a universal principle for ministry.

And this doesn't go for just leaders. But if you're a Sunday school teacher, you set up the chairs, you're a nursery worker, you cook for the glory of God, of saints here at the church, you are not going to be given rewards based on your success.

It's good to know. But according to your work, the word means wage. And I might get a lot more earnings, a lot more rewards in heaven than you think I should. Because you don't know maybe how godly I am on the inside.

And it's just kind of a secret between God and I, piety that you could never see. Or I might get a lot less. Because this could be more show than substance. How do you know? Well, you can look at a life.

And after a while, people talk enough and act a certain way. You pretty much can see what a life is like over time. But since we can't know the heart and we don't know the motives, you don't know if my motives are pure or I haven't had a pure motive in my life, but how pure they are relatively.

So let God be the judge. And he will be. And to think that we would get wages according to his labor. I'd be happy with no wages. I'd be happy with just heaven seeing Jesus forever and ever versus grinding my teeth where the worm dieth not in hell.

Yet he gives wages. So if you're sitting in the congregation, you're like, well, you know, I got to rank him and put him here. And, you know, Pradeep seems a little more, you know, a lot more modest than Mike.

And maybe Pradeep really in heaven, he's going to get these rewards and Mike's not. And I put him here. And where's Steve go? Where's Dave go? Who ranks where? Focus is all wrong. We'll get wages. We'll get rewards.

And so our focus needs to be on who Jesus is success. No faithfulness. Yes. And number six, finally, number six, the six considerations so that you'll know how to think properly about spiritual leaders.

Focus on Jesus and Marvel at His Work Through Leaders

Number six, found in verse nine, focus on Jesus and then marvel at Christ's work among you through leaders. Focus on Jesus and marvel at his work among you through vessels of clay. Found in verse nine, by the way, I said it last week, but it bears repeating.

I just love preaching through the Bible because I'd never preach a sermon like this in a million years. When you just get a pick one, you know, you have a guest, you're a guest speaker at a church and you think, well, let's see, what should I preach on today?

First Corinthians three, five to nine. Think less of me. But it's so good to just preach it through. Let's just do a little test. You've got brand new SV Bible, so it's probably not fair, but we'll do it anyway.

How many people have verses five, six, seven, eight, and nine underlined or partially underlined? Raise your hand. Wow, that's good. I'm wrong. I'm just a servant. Verse nine, for we, the planter, the water, the apostles, Apollos, Paul, it's going to apply to everybody.

We can see any leader. We are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. Now, if you had to pick the word that was repeated there most often in verse nine, I think you're going to see God, God, and God.

And these fellow workers, Paul and Apollos, maybe if Peter went there, any other ministers, me, the rest of the leaders here for Bethlehem Bible Church, the text says we are God's fellow workers. That either means we work for God or we work with God.

Practically, we do both. We work for God and we work with God. Not like we're some kind of perfect partner, but we work with God. So the focus here is not on the people. The focus is on this is God's work.

Listen to what D .A. Carson says. The entire sweep of the analogy now becomes clear. The field represents the Corinthians and it belongs to God. The workers in the field are people like Paul and Apollos, and they belong to God.

God owns the field. God owns the workers. He assigns the workers their task, and he alone makes the seed grow. Truths that the Corinthians are ignoring. Christian leaders are only servants of Christ and are not to be accorded allegiance that is reserved for God alone.

It is not that gratitude to Paul or Apollos or some other worker is inappropriate. Rather, what Paul finds inexcusable is the kind of fawning and defensive attachment to one particular leader that results in one upsmanship, quarreling, and jealousy.

It verges on assigning that leader a godlike status, end quote. This is God's field. And then he says, look, it's God's building. I do want to say this. Buildings in our society can go up almost overnight.

When I ride my bike past a certain building, I think they're just breaking ground. Then the foundation is up. Then the two by fours are up and the drywall is on. And the next thing you know, you see there's a sprinkler in the front yard and grass is growing and they can just put those building up overnight.

But when Paul is talking about, this is God's building. How long did it take to build buildings back in those days, in the Bible days? A long time. How long did it take to build the temple? How long did it take to build a cathedral in the 1200s?

How about 300 years, 400 years? But the focus here is everything is God's. Yet he works through people. It's amazing. And so we should be like Mrs. A, supportive of our leaders, but unimpressed. And a church who's focused on Christ Jesus and proclaiming him will be blessed.

There's a man named Shields. He lived in Ontario. He tells this true story. It was two generations ago and there was a young boy and he was crippled and he had crutches. Teenage boy. He was walking home one day and the ruffians came by and roughed him up a little bit with their fists, took his crutch away and threw it over the stone wall, similar to the ones we have in New England.

Walls made of stone. And then they stood back and began to throw rocks at him, hitting him, hurting him badly. He didn't know what to do. And he looked around. True story, according to Shields. He looked around and far off in a field was a big man working, a strapping man working.

And to use the inflection that Shields uses when he tells the story, the boy looked over and said, Father, the dad dropped the hoe. The dad dropped all the tools. He comes running over, leaping over the fence, breaks up the ruffians, gives the crutches to the boy and says, you're going to be fine, son.

I thought in one way, that's a good illustration of salvation. Here we are with sin and Satan and our enemies. And by the grace of God, we call out Father and he sends his son to rescue us. But then I thought that's not quite right.

Because the picture is, we, before salvation, were throwing stones at the father. We were the ones who were at enmity with God, trying to kill God if we could. And then the father sends his son, who uniquely, who graciously takes the punishment, not from those throwing the stones, but he takes the punishment that was due the stone throwers and he intercepts it and stands in between as a mediator, as a high priest.

And he absorbs all the rightful wrath of God, as God would have retaliated to the stone throwers. The son steps in. And the one thing the son never said, because the father had to turn his back on him, was Father.

And the father, in love, sent the son to rescue. And the son, gladly, in love, came to rescue. And that's why we're Christians. Because God made us Christians. And one day, if you're older and you're on your deathbed, I hope you're like the old lady who said, when the pastor asked, do you have a hope of heaven?

Are you sure of eternal life? How do you know you're going to get to heaven? And she said, I know I'm going to heaven because God is just. God is just. How about merciful, kind, gracious? She said, no, pastor, God is just.

And if he punished Jesus for every one of my sins, he'll never punish me again and I have the hope of heaven. I'm going to heaven because God is just. And if God did that for us, then why would we ever want to worship a leader?

Let's pray. Our heavenly father, it's good to be here today to be reminded again of eternal truth, your truth. Fads come and go. You cause the growth. Help us as a church to be faithful to your word, faithful to preach Christ crucified.

Faithful to preach the literal resurrection. Father, these dear people who come and gather, I pray that you'd bless them, encourage them. And father, my prayer today for Bethlehem Bible Church, besides not following leaders, is that they would be so enamored with your just, loving name that they'd want to serve you wholeheartedly for the rest of their lives, that they'd have no God before them, not the God of sports, not the God of kids, not the God of money, not the God of career, but they would just want to respond out of love and out of debt and out of gratitude, out of worship, to just live their lives, whether that's being a mom, a worker.

Secular sacred means not. I just pray that you'd give them a heart to respond to the gospel as Christians to live with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Father, we do look to Jesus today who epitomize that, who live for you every waking moment and who you said, this is my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased in Jesus name.

Amen.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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