A Charge We Have to Keep

The Charge to Elders in 1 Peter 5

I want to invite you to open your Bibles with me and turn this morning to the 5th chapter of the book of 1 Peter. The message this morning is entitled, A Charge We Have to Keep, 1 Peter chapter 5, verses 1 through 5.

So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion but willingly as God would have you, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders, clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Our Father and our God, we come before you in Jesus' name. And Father, as we seek to open the word together and understand the word together and prepare ourselves for the participation in installing men to the office of elder, we know, Lord, that this is a great and wondrous duty in the life of the church.

And we know, Lord, that we are simply stewards of this. You, O Lord, are the one who calls men. You are the one who changes their hearts. You are the one who gifts men to service. And you are the one who gives the particular gift of leadership and eldership and the love for the word and a love for your people and a love for the shepherding care that you have given to your under shepherds, those men that you have called as elders.

Father, as I come this morning, I I thank you, Lord, for the calling that you have placed on my life. And I thank you for the calling that is shared by those men who are called elders. And I thank you for the duties that you give to us while they are often difficult.

Father, we thank you for those and Lord, as I preach this morning on the subject of eldership and the role of both the elder and the church. I pray that you would, in your mercy and your grace, keep me from error, open the hearts of your people to hear the truth.

And Lord, may this not be a sermon that is only directed at two men, but Lord, may it be a sermon that goes out to the whole congregation. And Lord, may the gospel be infused in every part and that we understand that no man is called to service of Christ apart from the gospel.

And it is for the gospel which we have been called into service. We thank you for all that you have done and will do through that gospel. And it is the gospel of your son, Jesus, and we pray it in his name.

Amen. Today is a special Sunday, as we all know, we are going to be in just a few moments participating in an ordination and installation service for Michael Collier and for Andy Montoro. And as I was thinking about this this week, as I was thinking about all that goes into this, it sort of dawned on me I've only done this one other time.

And the history of our church, while it be long, is really we have had moments of major change in the last decade. And so prior to my becoming the pastor here, we were a quite different church and God has done some very miraculous things and bringing about some what I would say revivals.

And oftentimes people only think of revival as that one week church service that churches have where they come every night and somebody has an evangelistic call and people come forward and they call that revival.

But really what revival is, is when God does a work among a people and he changes hearts and he changes churches and it's a lasting change. That's how you know revival has happened. You know, oftentimes in these quote unquote revivals, you'll see somebody who gets really saved on a Wednesday and you don't even see him on Sunday and you never see him again.

That's revival does not come with a five minute change. Revival doesn't come with a five day change or a five month change. Revival comes when you see change that is lasting and it changes a people, it changes a church.

And I'm so thankful that I'm so thankful that God brought revival here in the way that he did. It was a revival of understanding of theology. It was a revival of understanding the centrality of the preaching of the word of God.

And what some of you may or may not know, it was a revival of understanding the model that God has set up for the for the governance of his church. I remember the first time I heard that word when somebody said church governance and I knew it was related to government, but I didn't really understand the term church governance.

And so so I had to, as I often do, had to go to a dictionary and look up what that means. And it does relate to government. It's the it's the idea that the church is to is to function as a body in there.

And there are to be there are to be structures within the assembly and the and the ultimate structure is this Christ is the head. So oftentimes people think that they are the head of the churches, but I know a lot of pastors who, if in their secret moments could be honest, would say they believe they were the head of their church.

One of my preaching professors at school said he was a interim minister and he visited a church where he was the interim pastor for just a few weeks. And when he first arrived, one of the deacons was there with the key to the door and he opened the door for him and he walked him inside and he was showing him around.

And he said, well, pastor, I want you to know if you need anything, I'm the head of this church. And and the and the preaching pastor said, well, that's good, I thought it was Jesus, but now it's good to know.

And and the reality is Christ is the head of the church and Christ is the governor of the church. And yet the body is not a lot of individual people running around sort of doing their own things under Christ within the body.

There are other levels of structure that Christ has set up. And so Christ sets up his church with himself as the head, himself as the chief cornerstone, himself as the foundation. Our church is one foundation is Jesus Christ, our Lord.

And we are his new creation through the spirit and the word. We we know that he is the he is the he's the covering. He's the foundation. He's the cornerstone. And yet within that, as he the great shepherd, he establishes within the church structure for leadership.

And in a lot of churches, the understanding of structure is that you have a pastor and he's sort of in charge of everything. And then maybe you have a board who's in charge of everything or or maybe it's a congregation that has to meet every every two weeks because there's a business decision that has to be made.

And so the congregation has to meet every two weeks and vote on everything. And whether it's a democracy where everybody gets a vote and it's often 51 to 49, as we saw in our government this last week, that works great, doesn't it?

But we often get these situations where it's either governed by some kind of a rule of democracy, mob rule type thing, or it's governed by one man who himself is sort of a mini pope, you know, sort of the, you know, Baptists say they don't believe in the pope until you go to their churches and meet their pastors.

You know, so you've got these so you've got these structures of church that are really out of line with what God has set up. And that was one of the revivals that we saw in this church was an understanding of the role of the elder because we always had elders.

Jack Bunning, you've been an elder in this church for a long time, well before I came pastor and well before we had our would you agree there was a revival here? And I won't put you on the spot, but would you agree with that, that we were a revival of understanding of certain things?

And one was the role of the elder, right? Whereas before the elder sat almost in an advisory capacity, we went to the scripture and we saw no elders are not just advisors who sit off in the corner and pray that everything goes well.

The elders are to take a step out in front and lead. We're not cowboys who get in the back and drive, but we're shepherds who step out in front and lead. That's the role of the elder to step out in front and say, I'm going to follow Christ and you follow me.

And you say, boy, is that prideful? No, that's what Paul said to imitate me as I imitate Christ. And we're going to see in just a moment when we go through this passage, Peter's going to say the same thing.

They're men worthy of imitation. Does that mean everything I do, you ought to imitate? No, because I do make mistakes. And all of our elders err and we are fallible men. And that's why we are we are worthy to be called to account.

And none of us is beyond being called to account. No man in this church, no woman in this church is too important to be called out if we're wrong. And so we understand the role of the elder is that of shepherd.

And we began to structure the church around that model. We said Christ is like the umbrella over the whole church and he is the head. He governs the church through his word. The Bible is how he governs his church.

This is our working document. Do we have a constitution in this church? Yes, we do. The Constitution, though, is not what runs this church. The Bible is what runs this church. The only thing the Constitution tells us is how many times you ought to have meetings every year, how you're going to deal with things like paying bills and things like that, who's going to be in charge of the money and those things and how those people are going to be chosen.

That's what the Constitution is for. And it sets aside a very simple structure of what our statement of faith is. That way, when someone joins the church, you know what we believe about the Trinity. You know what we believe about the deity of Christ.

You know what we believe about salvation by grace through faith alone. You know what we believe about the role of the members of the church. You know all those things because we could say, well, yeah, here's the Bible.

Here's what we know. Here's what we believe about those things. But we write a very simple outline of a statement of faith. And that's what our Constitution does. It provides a statement of faith and a statement of how we're going to govern.

But how we govern is simple. Christ is the head. He governs through his word. And he has called men as elders. Shepherds. With the responsibility. To interpret and apply the word within the ministry of the church.

And within the people. The lives of the people of the church. We have no authority in ourselves. You understand that? John MacArthur was asked recently, how much authority does the elder in the church have?

He said, none. He said, this is where the authority is. Our job is to teach this and to preach this. And if I tell you or ask of you something that is not here. And that's not founded on the principles that come from here, I have no authority.

The authority is in Christ and in his word. And he gives the stewardship of leadership to the men called elders. And thus they have that role and that leadership and that authority. But it's not an authority that's a totalitarian authority.

We look at that again when we get to our passage. And I know this is a long introduction. Maybe I should just get to the text. But the point in all of this is simply to say. That the role of the elder that we understand it in this church is very simple.

We have Christ who is the head of the church, not the elders. We have the word of God, which is the governing document of the church given to us by Christ. It's literally the word of God to us. And that's how we govern through.

And the elders are responsible to interpret and apply that within the body of the church. Off of that, we could talk about deacons and being in roles of service. We could talk about the role of ministry of gifts within the church.

There's all kinds of things that go beyond that. But that's the basic structure and foundation of how we manage the church. And it's in scripture. Did you know there's nowhere in the Bible that teaches a single pastor model?

There's nowhere in the Bible that teaches that there's one guy in charge and that one guy speaks without ever being questioned. Unfortunately, that's how it is in a lot of places. There's one guy who has all authority and everything he says has to be true and no one can question him.

You know, what often arises out of that is the cult of personality where you have one guy who's in charge and his word cannot be questioned. And that's very dangerous. You know what I like when I'm preaching?

I like that I have to think sometimes. Is this true? And not only is it true and what I'm saying, is this something that is so incontrovertible that I'm not going to be called out on this? And sometimes I'll say and Mike and I know sometimes we've seen you preach and I think you kind of do the same thing.

You'll say something, you'll say, now, this is controversial. You say this, this, this interpretation may not be shared by everyone. Right. But when we stand on something, we stand firm, we stand together.

And I can say with the backing of the elders, this is what this means. This is the truth. And we come together. And I know if I'm wrong, one of them is going to come to me or if not, one of you. I remember a pastor years ago saying something so arrogant.

He said, I don't know why anybody would question what I say. I've been to school. I don't know why anyone would question this guy. I mean, first of all, the arrogance to even utter to have that thought, much less let it become a word.

That comes out of your mouth. And he said, I don't know why anyone would question me. I've been to school. I said, have you met some of the guys who go to school? They're crazy. I said, school don't prove nothing.

I went to school, too, and I thank God that I have men that will call me to account if I say something wrong. And so the elders have this responsibility and it's a guiding responsibility to teaching responsibility.

And there's several passages. Obviously, the subject this morning is eldership. There's several passages I could have looked at. First Timothy three, Titus two. They give us the description or Titus one.

He gives us a description of the eldership and the role of the elders and how their families are to be functioning and how they're to function as men in the life of the church. But then we come to first Peter and first Peter doesn't really give us that.

He doesn't really say, you know, husband of one wife and not a brawler and not a drunkard and all those things, which is what Paul gives us. And Timothy sort of gives us an outline of the of the moral character of what an elder should look like.

Peter gives us a little different look because Peter comes in and he says, I want to exhort you as a fellow elder. Peter is speaking as one who is sharing in this role. And Peter comes in now. Now, who is Peter?

Obviously, we know who Peter is. I want to spend 15 minutes talking about who Peter is. Peter was one among the 12 apostles who was the most vocal. Some people consider him somewhat of a leader among the apostles.

I don't know if he was a leader, if he just couldn't keep his mouth shut. Often the two go together, you know, but he was a vocal member of Christ's 12. And he was one of three men who were very precious in the ministry of the 12 because he was one of the three men that were on the Mount of Transfiguration with Christ.

While there were 12 men who were within Jesus's circle, there were these three men, Peter, James and John, who had a special and particular relationship where they were able to be with Jesus in very specific times in his ministry, very specific times in his life.

And so, Peter, he has a lot that he could claim as his own. He is apostle, he is mouthpiece, he is the one who Jesus has blessed and has restored. Remember, Peter fell and Jesus restored him. He could claim any of those things, but he doesn't.

Read again, verse one. So I exhort the elders among you as a some presbyteros, that's the Greek, some presbyteros, that word means a fellow elder. You guys have heard the word presbyteros before. If you're a Presbyterian or somebody who comes out of a Presbyterian background, the word Presbyterian comes from the word presbyteros.

And it's where we get the word elder. OK, now you might have also heard of Episcopalian, right? That's where that comes from, the Greek word episkopos, episkopos, to oversee is what the Greek means there, to look over or to oversee.

So you'll see the term overseer is episkopos. You'll see the term presbyteros, that is elder. And some people think those two things are different. Some people think the episkopos or the overseer is the and some people call them bishops.

Some churches have what are called bishops and the bishop is the episkopos or the overseer. And then they have their elders, which are the sort of like a council or a board. But in Scripture, the Bible doesn't make a distinction between those two.

The Bible basically says is presbyteros is what you are, episkopos is what you do. As elders, we oversee, as elders, we we are overseers of the congregation. That's that's that's how that works. One is they're both titles, but they're titles in the sense of what you are to do.

And notice that Peter says, I exhort the elders among you. And that word elders there is actually the the plural form of presbyteros. And that's important for us to understand, because this job is never meant for one person.

I mentioned that already. It was never meant that any church would just have one pastor. Now, that doesn't mean that it's wrong to have a preaching pastor. And sometimes I sometimes I because we used to use the term senior pastor.

Notice we don't use that term anymore. Pat and I were actually joking about that one time. She said, why we use the word senior pastor, you know, only one. And I said, well, thank you. That makes sense.

But it also is true that I don't hold any senior position among the elders. I'm not the guy who's in charge of the elders. But I have been gifted among the elders as by God, as one who's gifting is to preach.

And I have been gifted as as one who has had the opportunity to give my life to the full time ministry service. And you have gifted me by supporting me in that. Not every elder is going to have that opportunity to be full time in the service of Christ, although I bet many of them would want to do this.

But not everybody's called to that. Not everybody's called to full time service. And again, since it's you guys, I want to tell you, Andy works for Penske Trucking and I still don't know exactly what he does, but I know he's pretty important because when I get an email, it says from Andy at Penske.

So I know it's a it's a big, important part of his life. And it's and so Andy has a job that he does. And I don't know how many hours he works, but it's full time and he's there and he works very hard.

And that's that's going to take time out of out of his ministry here. But that's but that's what he has to do. He's supporting his family. It's not that doesn't mean he can't serve. Mike owns a business.

He owns a painting company and he works sometimes 60 hours a week. And I wish I had the stamina. Mike Collier. And he just works and works and works and works and works. And he has all this energy. And I appreciate that.

But both of these men have jobs that are that are livelihoods that support their family. And so we have to consider that that while they are with me as equals, we are equal men as as pastors. And you can feel free to think of all of our elders as pastors because that's what they are.

We are all shepherds of this church. We equally shepherd this church. The difference, if there is any difference at all, is the difference is that by the grace of God, this is my livelihood. And so I have more time to commit to things of ministry than they would.

But it doesn't mean that my calling is any more precious or any more special or any more important in the life of the church than what these men are doing. I'm thankful that Jack and Richard are both retired.

And so for the last few years, I really haven't had to worry about working elders because they've been retired and are pretty much available any time. So now we're having to think about, well, we got to think about meetings now and we have to step back and think about those things because we want to involve the elders and we want all to be involved in the leadership of this church.

But I just want to say it's that kind of plurality that we want. Every one of these men is gifted in a different way. Every one of these men, Richard, has gifts that are different than mine. Jack has gifts that are different than mine.

And now we see Mike and Andy coming in with gifts that are different than mine and experiences that are different than mine. And that's the beauty of the plurality of eldership. And that's why when it says elders, it is elders, not an elder, but elders.

And so Peter says, I exhort you elders as one among you, not above you. Peter's not putting himself in a special category, even though we might rightly put him in the special category of apostle. He is not doing that.

At this point, he's saying we are fellow presbyter, we are fellow elders in the ministry of Christ. But then he goes on to say something else about himself. He says, not only am I a fellow elder, but I'm a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed.

Now, this is a little bit of a have to consider what he's saying here, because a lot of people think the glory that he's talking about here in verse one is the glory that he saw on the Mount of Transfiguration.

But in the context, it seems more likely he says the glory that is going to be revealed. So it looks as if what he's saying here is I'm a fellow sharer in the glory to come again, connecting himself with the body rather than saying I'm special because I saw the mountain rather because I'm special because I was one of the three of Jesus's inner circle.

Rather than saying that, he's saying, yes, I saw the sufferings of Christ and many of you did, too, because remember, Peter's preaching and teaching at a time when these people would have seen it. Many of these people would have seen Jesus Christ rise from the dead.

Remember how many how many Paul say saw him rise from the dead? Five hundred people saw Jesus rise from the dead. And Peter saying you saw the point is he's making himself connected with them. He's not rising above them.

He's connecting with these elders and he's saying, I'm a fellow elder with you. I've seen the sufferings of Christ and I, like you, look forward to the glory of his return. We all have a shared. Promise that we are you, I hope you come here excited about the fact that one of two things is going to happen, either you're going to leave this planet and be with Jesus or Jesus is going to come back and take you to be with him.

And that's the blessing that we come here for, not because we're earning that it's already been bought and paid for. That's not the point. But we come here to look forward to that. We come here to sing about that and to praise God for the blessing of knowing that there's glory to come.

And you know what the Bible says about that? It says our present sufferings are not to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us. This life is hard, this life is difficult, sometimes it's unbearably so, and it feels like it's going to crush us like an elephant sitting on our chest.

And yet Christ tells us, Paul tells us that our present sufferings, as bad and as difficult and as hard as they may be, are not to be compared to the glory. And when we're there, those sufferings won't matter anymore.

When we're there, the pain will be gone. Revelation 21 talks about the new heaven and the new earth and the new Jerusalem. And it talks about God wiping every tear from our eyes. For those who have experienced great pain, that's a source of comfort to know that there is a glory coming.

And Peter says, as one of you, as one of you elders, I am a partaker of that glory. That's going to be revealed. We are all partakers of that glory that is going to be revealed. So that's his introduction.

He's he's telling who he is. And obviously, this is part of his longer letter, which is specifically dealing with persecution. Primarily, First Peter's written to the persecuted church. It's in the dispersion and there's all this persecution that's going on.

And he's already been giving exhortations to the church. But now he's speaking specifically to elders. I exhort the elders among you as fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed.

And now comes the charge. Remember, that's the title of the message. Charge I have to keep. Verse two. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising episkopos. Remember, I told you those words are used interchangeably.

He's called them presbyteros earlier. Now he's saying what they're going to do. They're going to exercise oversight. Shepherd the flock of God. You know what the blessing of that passage reminds us? Elders, you know what that reminds us?

They're not ours. They're God's. This church doesn't belong to me. It certainly doesn't belong to the elders. This is the flock of God. You know, the Bible says about the flock of God, you know, the Bible says about the church.

It says God paid for it with his own blood. God sent his son born of a woman born under the law, and when he came, he fulfilled the law perfectly and he paid for us in his blood. We are his. That's what is the word redeem me to purchase, to buy back.

He has purchased us. He has bought us. We are his flock. We are the sheep of his pasture. And so elders, when we get placed in a position of leadership, when we get placed in a position of eldership, we are placed in the position.

Of stewardship. The master has given us a stewardship, the master has said these are mine, manage them. These are mine, lead them. These are mine, love them. What does the shepherd do? I have a list, I have a list of four things the shepherd does, four things, feeding, leading, guiding and protecting.

That's four things that a shepherd does for the sheep in the same way. It's what the elders do for the church feeding. How do the elders feed the church with the word of God? We feed the word of God to the people.

I had an elder years ago, a pastor gave a great illustration. He said, when your child is small, you take and I see this every night. So I'm reminded of this illustration every night when Jennifer sits down to feed Faith and she takes these pieces of food that we're all eating with no problem because we have these big teeth and we can we can chew food and we can swallow food and our body can digest food.

But Faith still isn't there yet. So so she has to cut it all into pieces and break it up into pieces so that that she can eat it. Right. And that's sort of what preaching is. Preaching is and please don't think I'm equating everyone to babies, but what I'm saying is how the preacher works is he takes the word of God and he takes it and puts it into pieces and then distributes it to be eaten, to be to be imbibed, to be fed upon.

That's why we don't preach four chapters at a time, because that would be like trying to give Faith a whole loaf of bread. It would choke her to death. We break the word of God down into pieces and we feed it.

That's what we do in our Bible studies. That's what we do in our Sunday schools. That's what we do in our men's studies. It's what we do on Wednesday night. It's what we do on Sunday. The elders break the word of God down into pieces and say, eat.

And so as as shepherds, we feed the people the word of God, and then the second thing is leading. So they feed and then they lead. As I said already about the cowboy, we're not behind driving, but we're out in front saying follow.

And as we lead, the third is guiding. The elder is always pointing the church to Christ. Always pointing the church to Christ, not to himself. And finally, is protecting. As a shepherd protects the flock, the elder has the responsibility of protecting the church.

This part is the most misunderstood part. Over the years, I've had several times where folks have become upset with me because from the pulpit, I have said this is a false teaching and this is a false teacher.

And maybe have mentioned a few people by name, and I've had a few people I've actually I know of at least one who was so upset that they left. I can't believe that you would say that so and so is a false teacher.

And I my response is never harsh or angry, but I say, listen, my job and the job of the elders is to protect the flock. And when I see you guys reading Joel Osteen, I tell you that's false. And I don't have any I don't have any thing else to say except put that nonsense away.

If my son were looking at things and reading things that I knew were going to harm him, I would tell him because it's my duty to protect him. Now, ultimately, it's going to be between you and God as to whether you do it.

But I'm going to tell you what's false and what's true. And there's a lot of dangerous stuff out there. We've had people come in this church who tried to bring danger into this church. And you may not think it.

I mean, I've had people come to my office. God has given me a word to speak to your congregation. Pastor, you need to let me speak to your congregation. No, actually, my answer was, what was the word?

He said, well, I can't tell you it's been given to your congregation. I said, if you can't say to me, you ain't going to say to them. I mean, that's that's the first line of defense. You're not going to stand up and and prophesy nonsense among our people.

We had a person here years ago that was trying to sell a book that they had written. And it was a book of nonsense. And it was trying to be and it was it was it was wrong, outright awful. Got so offended when I said, you can't sell your book here.

We don't agree with it. It's wrong. What am I supposed to do? What are the elders supposed to do? And think about when somebody is in sin and the elders have to call someone to repentance. That's often the hardest part.

Feelings get hurt. Lines get drawn, clicks develop. Sides are taken. The elders have to. Stay consistent with the word, not with just their friends, you know. Can be difficult. That's the part that people don't think about, but that's part of shepherding the flock of God, right?

Because you are not perfect and we're not perfect. And yet we're called to to minister even to those difficult things. And the church can't overlook sin, we can't just say, well, you know, they're not really hurting anybody.

No, they are. They're hurting themselves. I'm never going to get through this. Shepherding the flock of God, we have to remember, man, it's God's flock, it's not ours. And as shepherds, we are called to feed them, to lead them, to guide them toward Christ and to protect them from the evil one, protecting them from bad teaching, protecting them from sin.

We can't do everything for them, but by the grace of God, we do all that we can. He goes on to say, exercising oversight, not under compulsion. But willingly, as God would have you, not for King James language, filthy lucre, shameful gain, but eagerly.

I just want to stop right there, verse three, before I go into verse three, not under compulsion. I will say this about the two men that are coming today to be ordained. And I hope this comes out the right way.

I didn't have to twist either one of their arms to do this. In fact, both of them wanted to do this, and I'm thankful for that. Because it's better to have fewer elders than to have men that you've had to force to do it and don't want to do it.

You know, when the Bible says the man who is the first Timothy three, he who aspires to the office of elder or actually that's Episcopalist, who aspires to the office of overseer, desires a noble task.

So the word there is aspiration and desire. It's something that's in his heart that God has given to him. Now, of course, there are people who inappropriately desire because they desire power or they desire money or they desire to exercise certain types of heavy handed, powerful oversight over people.

And that's wrong. But there is a godly desire. And you know how I know when and again, I'm not the answer to all things, but I know when somebody has the godly desire is what their concerns are. And when I get phone calls from Mike and I get phone calls from Andy or emails from Penske Trucking that tells me about the concerns for the body.