January 9, 2025 Show with Steve Hofmaier AND Austin Huggins on “The Minister as Shepherd” (Part 2)

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors and Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions.

And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon, Cumberland.

County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this ninth day of January 2025.

This is another special broadcast we are about to conduct to promote the First Love Ministries Conference. This is another one of those very rare commercial free broadcasts of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and we are going to be interviewing today two more speakers that will be featured at the First Love Ministries Conference, which by the way is going to be held next Thursday through Saturday.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, January 16th, 17th, and 18th at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York. I will be there as the Master of Ceremonies hosting the three-day event. I hope that as many of you listening who are able to get to Long Island, New York, will attend this very important event.

The last time we had a special on this three-day conference, we featured Dr. Conrad M. Bayway, pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and also the founding chancellor of African Christian University, and I say without exaggeration or hyperbole or flattery that Conrad is truly the most powerful preacher that I've ever personally heard on the planet Earth.

He was on the last special program that we had promoting the conference along with Dr. Joe Jackowitz, a very longtime personal friend of mine as well. He is pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, and also the founder of First Love Ministries, and so today we are going to be joined by two of the other speakers, the other half of the speaking roster.

We have joining us today Pastor Steve Hoffmeier, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Anybody who is a Reformed Baptist is fully aware of this landmark church in the United States that was among the original pioneering churches that were seeking to restore the doctrines of sovereign grace to Baptist churches in the latter half of the 20th century.

Starting about the mid -20th century, Trinity Baptist Church was well known as a crucial and key church, changing the landscape theologically of Baptist churches by the grace of God. He is going to be on the program today along with Pastor Austin Huggins, pastor of Mount Zion Bible Church, which operates the world-renowned publishing ministry Chapel Library, and he's also vice president at First Love Ministries.

By the way, Mount Zion Bible Church is located in Pensacola, Florida, but it's my honor and privilege, first of all, to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Steve Hoffmeier.

I'm glad to be here. It's a privilege to be part of this ministry and to work.

Alongside my esteemed brethren. Well, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey? Our church was.

Established back in 1967, I believe it was. My wife's father was one of the elders of a church to which Pastor Al Martin came and ministered as an itinerant minister, and they enjoyed his ministry so much he was just being biblical, seeking to apply the Scriptures as he understood them, and they called him then to be their pastor, and that church was an existing church in a denomination, eventually left that denomination and became Trinity Baptist Church.

So my father-in-law was an elder in the church before Pastor Martin was, and it was at that time that Pastor Martin was coming into an understanding of the doctrines of grace back in the 1960s and began to preach them, and the church then adopted the 1689 Confession as understanding grew.

And Pastor Martin's conviction, his determination was to do what the Bible said and to go where the Scriptures lead and to just preach the Word, and that's what he did. And he was my mentor. I came to that church in 1978 to the Trinity Ministerial Academy, which was a church-based seminary at the time, and I was in the second graduating class of that establishment, and it.

Was a great blessing to have that training. Great, and unless they've changed it, the website that I always knew for Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey is trinitymontville .org. Is it still that?

Yes, that's.

Correct. Great. So there are sermons, you can find a whole backlog of.

Sermons there dating back many years. Terrific. And also joining us today is a returning guest, Pastor Austin Huggins, who, as I said, is one of the pastors, along with Jeff Pollard at Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida, which operates the world-renowned Publishing Ministry Chapel Library.

Believe me, I'm not exaggerating when I say that they have something for you on every topic relevant to the Christian faith by all of the greats who embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace from the past and present, and I'm sure that you will find the very vast catalog of available titles and themes and authors quite breathtaking, available through Chapel Library, and the prices cannot be beat.

And he is also vice president of First Love Ministries, the ministry that not only live streams this show, Iron Trip and Zion Radio, but also is hosting, along with me, the conference on Long Island next week.

Well, welcome back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Austin Huggins. Thank you so much, dear brother.

It's good to be back with you. I think, first off, I just want to say we've been keeping you in prayer, brother. I know that your health situation has been difficult, and the saints here at First Love have been keeping you in prayer.

Yes, it's always a joy to be reminded of that, and I've been hearing from brethren all over the world who have been letting me know that not only are they personally praying for me, but their congregations are as well.

And just to keep those up to speed who might not be aware of my health problems, I have congestive heart failure, and during the week of Christmas, I was hospitalized for seven days. I have been out of the hospital since, I believe it was the Saturday after Christmas, somewhere in that neighborhood, and I have been recovering slowly, continuing a medication protocol prescribed by the hospital, and I will keep you updated on my progress.

But tell our listeners something more about Mount Zion Bible.

Church and also Chapel Library. Absolutely, dear brother. I have the privilege to be one of two elders that serve here at Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida. As you pointed out, it is the home of Chapel Library as well as Mount Zion Bible Institute and Spurgeon Gems and a few other ministries that we have the privilege to oversee.

We are a congregation here that's been going on for a little over 40 years, and the same with the publishing house. As of today, by God's grace, we have been enabled to send literature freely into about 100 different nations around the world, where we're able to send sound literature, books, booklets, tracks, things of, just like you mentioned earlier, Chris, some of the Puritan greats, things by Spurgeon and Pink and Whitfield and Martin Lloyd-Jones and Jeremiah Burroughs and John Flable.

And it's a tremendous blessing to be able to see how the Lord answers the prayers of his people, provides for those resources, and enables us to send them largely free of charge to so many who are, you know, in the midst of so many cultural circumstances where there's so many heresies and false teachings that are rampant.

And the Lord has allowed us to be able to get our foot in the door, as it were, and bring those things that are good to eat. Very thankful for the saints here. As you know, Chris, earlier this year I was actually pastoring over at Baghdad, First Baptist Church Baghdad.

But my mentor when I was a young man was Mike Snyder, the founding administrator of our chapel library and L .R. Shelton Jr.'s right-hand man. Brother Mike passed and went home to be with the Lord last November at 90, and in the Lord's Providence, the saints here at Mount Zion were looking for another pastor to join alongside Pastor Jeff.

And it was at that time that the saints at First Baptist Church Baghdad, recognizing the need, lovingly agreed, laid hands on me, commissioned me, sent me to Mount Zion where they received me and installed me just this past beginning of July.

So still getting my legs up underneath of me, but it has been a tremendous and exciting time, and I'm.

Very thankful to be here by God's grace. Anybody who has listened to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio long enough knows that I have frequently announced the website of Chapel Library, chapellibrary .org, because of the fact, the very fact that I mentioned earlier, that many of the topics that I'm bringing up during Iron Sharp and Zion Radio have their have its teaching reflected in either a booklet or many booklets that have been brought into print by Chapel Library, and so I have occasion to plug them many times and love doing so.

And these are things that have been written by the greatest men of the Christian faith from the past and the present, and that's chapellibrary .org. Well, before we go into the conference and the theme of the conference, we have a tradition here.

Whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of his or her salvation testimony, and since Pastor Steve Hoffmeier has never been on this program before, we would love to hear your story, Steve.

All right, I don't know.

How brief it will be, but I'll seek to keep it brief. If we go back to the beginning, Jeff Pollard and I, by the way, share one thing in common. We were both born down south in Louisiana. Jeff and I both have our roots in that state, the Pelican State.

You might not know from my accent today because we moved to New Jersey when I was 14, and I lost my accent pretty quickly because if you all spoke like that down here in New Jersey, they would laugh you to scorn.

Forget about it. So anyway, you know, God has his purposes in all things. Down south, I was a member, an unconverted member of First Baptist Church New Orleans and was converted actually after we moved to New Jersey.

But in New Orleans, I was baptized. The pastor asked me, do you believe that Jesus died for your sins? And I said, of course, because that's what I was taught. But I was not yet saved. I was not delivered from my sins.

I lived for myself. I wanted to go my own way. But a couple things bothered me as a young person. One thing was that although I didn't do, quote, bad things that other kids did, it bothered me that they did that and they were still members of the church.

Another thing that bothered me even more was when I met some genuine Christians that had something I didn't have. And that showed me that what I had wasn't real. And that bothered me. When we went to New Jersey then, faced with an ungodly society where only a few, I mean, out of, say, 33 students in my English class, three of us went to church.

One was a Catholic, one was a liberal Baptist, and then I was a Southern Baptist. And we believed the Bible, at least. So I basically went along with the flow and denied the gospel, though I still went along with my parents, the church.

But it was in the summer before my senior year at a youth camp. I was wrestling with God because my way was turning out to be a mess. And the option was God's way. And I knew His way was right. And it was at that youth camp that I repented of my stubborn self-will, my wanting to do my thing.

And it was there that the great transaction was made. And the Lord Jesus took me as His. But then from that day forward, I knew it meant I was not my own. I belonged to Jesus. And whatever He was going to do with my life, that was His business.

He was my Master. The idea of the Lordship of Christ, to me, I mean, that was settled when I was converted. I had never wrestled with that after that point. He was my Lord. He was my Savior. He was my Master.

And so I went away. I had my senior year in high school. Things were changed. Things were different. I was not living for myself. I had a long way to go, but it was a new life. And I went away to college, found Christian fellowship, and took up chemical engineering.

Finished my four years, but at the same time was involved in a college fellowship and wondered, is the Lord calling me to ministry? But I determined to work for a couple years. And then as that two years working for a little company here in New Jersey called Exxon, you might have heard of it.

After those two years, I was convinced that the Lord was calling me to the ministry. And at the time found in a magazine, the Sword and Trowel magazine, I found actually the little advertising blurb. There was an advertisement for Trinity Ministerial Academy, and it listed experimental Calvinism.

Now, I'd never heard that before. Experimental, but I was an engineer, so I knew it meant taking stuff out of the theory and putting it into practice. That appealed to me. Also said emphasis on grace as well as gift.

I knew that was important. It also mentioned local church base and historic Baptist distinctives. And all these four things appeal to me because all other reformed schools I knew were Presbyterian. And just a little side note, I had come to the doctrines of grace while I was in college through a college friend who asked me the question, Steve, are you a tulip man?

I didn't know what he was talking about. So anyway, and after I finished three years at Trinity Ministerial Academy, I ended up interested in missions, went for six months to Kenya and worked with Keith Underhill in Nairobi, Kenya, and then came back to the United States, realizing it was not good for me to be alone.

And so I found my dear wife, and together we were sent by Trinity Baptist Church to the Philippines in 1984, where I labored in the ministry for some 35 years, church planting, training men for the ministry, helping other churches be established.

So that brought me back to the United States in 2018 to help care for my mother-in-law. And in God's providence, I was no longer, we had three, two Filipino pastors, two more were coming into the eldership.

We had no new students in our ministerial training program there, and the church planting works I was helping did have men laboring, so I was free to come home, and then I was called to the eldership here at Trinity.

So that's it in a nutshell.

Great. And if I understand correctly, you have a number of elders there, and one of them is Dave Chansky, brother of Mark Chansky, but how many elders do you have there?

We have five elders, so besides Dave and myself, there is Bart Carlson, Jeff Smith, not the one from Coconut Creek, but another Jeff Smith, we call him Jersey Jeff, and Shahzad Khan, who is the son of our martyred missionaries, Arif and Qahti Khan, who were in Pakistan and were martyred there.

Wow. Well, what is the website, again, of Trinity Baptist? It's trinitymontville .org,.

Correct?

Yeah, so trinitymontville, all one word, dot org.

Great. Well, let me return to you now, Pastor Austins, especially since you are the vice president at First Love Ministries. Tell us about the purpose of this conference that's being held next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Coram, Long Island.

Absolutely. Thank you, brother. Yeah, so the goal of this year's conference, and First Love, just for the record, has had a history of conducting conferences similar to these in various missions locations overseas.

First Love exists to be able to provide needed and necessary resources, tools, doctrine, training, books, and booklets for a number of those third world areas where the churches are very often fighting uphill battles against just a slew of different kinds of heresies, false teachings, where they encounter the kinds of difficulties that we read about quite often.

And in the face of those difficulties, sometimes they have access to very little good resources, good teaching tools. And so we come alongside certain local churches that are known to us. We've built long-lasting relationships with in places like, you know, Kenya.

You said Trinity Baptist Church there, brother Steve, and Pastor Murungi is a very good friend and fellow laborer with us at First Love, and we love him dearly, and we get to see some of the fruit there of Keith Underhill's work in Nairobi, and it's quite precious, as well as the Philippines, as we were talking about earlier, and Nepal, and India, and one nation in particular that I labor at consistently, which is Nigeria, which is an area in West Africa that is plagued with some of the most incredible difficulties and insurmountable odds.

You know, Boko Haram is there. Of the Christian martyrs in the world that were martyred just last year, I want to say about 5 ,000 to 6 ,000 of them came from just Nigeria specifically. A lot of that is consolidated in the north where Boko Haram is, the Fulani herdsmen.

There's a lot of martyrdom and killing. The general crime rates there are quite high in a number of areas. But theologically, probably one of the greatest difficulties is the prevalence of a health, wealth, prosperity gospel that has come from the United States and amalgamated on the ground with a kind of tribal African mysticism, and it's produced this noxious offspring of some of the worst kinds where very often your church leaders or quote-unquote pastors are essentially and functionally no different than witch doctors.

And it is in the face of incredible systemic difficulties, economic, cultural, theological, and political difficulties that our brethren, their labor at Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Lagos—actually, as a matter of fact, if Brother Chris, our listeners, could just keep that church in prayer.

I just received a call within the hour, just within an hour ago. A dear brother of mine, Brother Shola Abraham, was crossing the road with his daughter and was hit by a motorbike and violently thrown to the ground.

He's in very critical state. He is a key brother in the translation of gospel resources into the Yoruba language, and we do not know his state right now. One of the heart-cry missionaries there had contacted me, Pastor Osi, and if we could please keep Brother Shola in our prayers, that the Lord would do a miracle and raise.

Him up. He has a young family. Amen, definitely. Well, I know that your first, if I'm not mistaken, your first message at next week's conference is the shepherd's love. If you could give us an.

Overview of that. Yeah, absolutely. And the connection from the mission field to the conference is that as we provide the conferences in the third world and in these regions to equip, we wanted to be able to do the same thing stateside and carry the same model of not charging anything, inviting pastors to come free of charge, equipping them with sound, theologically rigorous and experimental doctrine, and to be able to provide them books, booklets, and resources free of charge as well.

So the goal is to bring them in, to feed them, equip them, encourage them, and send them away without charging them a dime and without compromising. And so my particular sermon is going to deal with the love of the shepherd.

And the overall theme is the minister as shepherd. It's incredibly important, even as the Apostle Paul would point out in the book of Titus, that not only Titus himself would be a man of eminent godliness, even as Paul said to Timothy, take heed to yourself and to the doctrine.

But we see in Scripture, as Peter says, that you'd be an example unto the flock. There is power in a godly example. And a formidable aspect of a pastor's ministry goes well beyond just the real and vital necessary preaching and teaching that occurs in the pulpit.

But there is a life that attends that doctrine. There is an example that is walked out in the midst of the sheep of God. And as we break all the different elements and pieces down, I say all, but all that we can cover in a few days anyway, I'll be focusing on the love of a shepherd, that the pastor is to, in a typological way, a similar way that we as regenerate men and women who were sinners and have now been translated from the kingdom of darkness and made saints of the living God, we love only, why?

Because he loved us first. And there is a powerful, typological example for the true shepherd, under-shepherd of the Lord to follow. Very often, our people are coming from a loveless society, without natural affection, where the love of many has grown cold.

There's an icy indifference that grips the land. We're handed over very oftentimes to a radical apathy. And what we do understand of love is often defined by a kind of syrupy sentimentalism that does not mirror the Bible's definition of love.

And the shepherd, the pastor of a church, has a tall order. He must not only preach the love of God, but by the power of the Spirit, be enabled to walk out a tangible, manifest example of the love of God, to even the degree that he might be able to say, as the apostle Paul said to the church of Philippi, I love you with the bowels of Jesus Christ.

Now, who can say that with a clear conscience today? That's incredible. But there's an element to this where the pastor must embody the spiritual, real, biblical love of God to his people, if they will have a suitable example, something to follow, something to imitate, that they themselves may then be enabled to love one another and to love God rightly through the teaching, ministry, and the means of grace that the shepherd is to be.

Yes, whenever men try to invent a new version of what love should be, even, and perhaps even especially, when it comes to the love of God, they wind up concocting a really harmful idea of love, don't they?

That it's quite ironic that parents, even if they're unregenerate, would recognize that there's kinds of love that are attributed to God, and have been for quite a while, but it seems to get worse in our modern era, but they wouldn't even treat their own children with this kind of love, because they would recognize immediately it's harmful, and yet they want God to love that way.

You want to follow up.

On that? Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying, and I think I know where you're going. You know, there is an expectation of man that God will simply wink or turn a blind eye or overlook or disregard the very sins that utterly destroy, not only in the ultimate sense of hellfire, but those sins that destroy the mind, the blinding power of sin, the sins that destroy the conscience, the sins that move like gangrene and like cancer and metastasize into all the most vital areas of our life.

You know, sin is insidious, and it can do incalculable damage beneath the surface, and yet because of its blinding power, we can be totally ignorant of it and play with the very venom that destroys us.

And here, a father would never look at his son and see him sticking a fork in the electric socket and go, well, I don't want to startle the young boy, and I don't want him to think I hate him, so I'm just going to overlook that and look the other way.

That wouldn't be love. That would be a criminal negligence. That's criminal negligence. That is apathy of the worst kind. If a father sees his son on the railroad tracks—just a typical example, right, the train's coming—you don't go out and with a soft voice, politely request he consider stepping off.

The father loves his kid. He's going to full-body tackle him off that railroad track. He's going to do everything in his power for the good of his son, whether or not in the moment the son actually understands all that comes with it.

Love is sacrificial in nature, and I know this is going to eventually segue into Pastor Steve's message, who's dealing with the sacrificial nature of a pastor, but you can't separate that from love. The pastor has a responsibility to love his people justly, to love his people rightly, to love his people not only for their own good's sake, but for God's sake.

He is a bond slave of Jesus Christ. God defines what love is, and like you said, Chris, even an unregenerate mother or father that is not completely handed over a Romans 1 style to the insanity of the age recognizes that love is protecting in nature, even from themselves, even protecting a child from their own innate self-inflicted danger.

The expectation of the common person today that God will just find people in destructive sins, destructive to self, destructive to others, and that his love is some kind of unjust tolerance that just simply just dismisses what's taking place is an absolute, abominable concoction of doctrines of devils, and it does not represent the pure and holy and clean and just love of Almighty God.

There is a video that I frequently refer to people who are having a hard time understanding what we are talking about in reference to the love of God, and believe it or not, the video is a product of an atheist who was compelled to tell his audience about an encounter he had with a Christian.

His name is Penn Jillette. He is a magician that breaks the number one code of the of all magicians is that he and his partner, Teller, the team is called Penn and Teller. They reveal the secrets on how tricks are actually performed, and he was telling the story.

In fact, if you go to YouTube and type in the search engine, Penn Jillette gets a Bible or just Penn Jillette Bible, it will come up, but he's telling the story of how after one of his Vegas acts, a Christian man approached him and gave him the gift of a Bible, and Penn Jillette was so impressed with this man, he saw that he was sane, he saw that he was genuine, he appeared to have the utmost of integrity, he was just very kind, and Penn believed he could sense that the kindness was genuine and not artificial.

The whole point of Penn Jillette's telling his audience about this, keeping in mind that Penn is an atheist, is that he was giving a rebuke not only to his fellow atheists who just get furious when Christians evangelize them.

He was saying that they should take a few steps back and really appreciate the fact that very often when this is being done, this is an act of genuine love and concern that somebody is demonstrating to them, even if they disagree with the existence of God.

But Penn Jillette was also rebuking Christians who are too cowardly to evangelize, who basically are putting in top priority things like the fear of hurting someone's feelings, the fear of just falling out of favor with someone because you're presenting something to them that they disagree with.

But he asks the question during this video, how much do you have to hate someone if you believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the life, and that no one can come to the Father but through him?

You cannot have eternal life. You cannot enter into heaven without faith in Christ. If you believe that and yet keep your mouth shut when you are providentially engaged in conversation with either strangers or even people that you know, if you are putting your own fear and the fear of what you may lose as a result of telling somebody about your faith and that they need to repent and share that faith themselves, you must really hate them because you are consciously doing that knowing that they will be in hell or, at the very least, not be in heaven.

And I have been so blown away and moved by this video for years that I've been sharing it frequently with people because I think it really gives a perspective on things that they may have never heard.

And that goes hand in hand, wouldn't you say, Austin, with your description of God's love that you were just discussing?

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And I think that the distillation of that is if we who have light see the danger that, let's say in this case, the unregenerate clearly cannot see, and out of apathy we do not act, that's not love.

That's not love. Love in Scripture is ultimately defined, and in this case, I would say demonstrated, just as the text gives us. God demonstrated his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

And we see love is an act. Love is a choice. Love is a sacrifice. It's a behavior. It's in motion. It bears fruit. You know, James points to that. How can I say I love my brethren and have this world's goods in my hand, see them starving and just, you know, the prayer, be warm, be fed?

You know, that's not love. It's the height of hypocrisy when Christ upbraids the Pharisees, when he said, you know, you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense, you make long prayers. There is a demand in Scripture that we love not only in word, but in deed and in truth.

Love has a behavior. When it gets up and walks around, it bears fruit. It's identifiable. And the shepherd is to be a fruit-bearing, spirit-filled experience, as it were, of the love of God to the sheep of God.

And this will be one aspect out of the other subjects that are going to be covered there with regard to the shepherd's character, the shepherd's walk, the shepherd's strength, the shepherd's sacrifice and care for the flock, the shepherd's fruit—all of these different things.

I think it is important, and for those pastors who are listening, with all the respect due to your office and your station, for it is the Holy Spirit that has made you overseers. We have a due diligence and a responsibility not to think of ourselves only as sermonizers and sound theologians, but we are to be shepherds in the midst of the sheep, caring for the flock and providing for them a kind of godly example that we might be enabled to say, like the Apostle Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ.

Yeah, I want to repeat, by the way, the conference dates. The conference is being held Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of next week, January 16th, 17th, and 18th at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York.

And if you want to register for this event, it's absolutely free of charge for men in ministry leadership, whether you're a pastor, elder, deacon, Sunday school teacher, etc., go to—.

Or even a seminary student and aspiring for the ministry.

Yes. Go to FirstLoveMinistries .org, FirstLoveMinistries .org, and you can click on events and just follow the instructions. But Pastor Steve Hoffmeyer, I know that your first message on the theme of the conference is the shepherds' sacrifice and care for the flock.

If you could give us some more details and an overview.

Yeah. Actually, in a way, it's two subjects. As you see, there's an and in the middle there. The shepherds' sacrifice speaks of what it will cost to engage in this labor. And when you consider the other topics that we looked at last week with Conrad Mbewe, the shepherds' character, the shepherds' walk, and then his last message is on the shepherds' fruit, but also Joe Jackowitz on the shepherds' strength.

These other things, his character, his walk, we must be—this involves sacrifice. It involves sacrifice to take up the labor and even the love, as Austin mentioned, of a shepherd to care for the flock.

You're not putting yourself first. Now, love is really putting the needs of others before yourself, doing that which is for the greatest good of the one that is loved. And just as God's love for the ungodly, as you quoted the verse from Romans 5, involved his sacrifice.

He delivered up his son. Now, he spared him not, but delivered him up for us all. Well, that was sacrificial love. Love is going to sacrifice. The labor of turning from the world, of giving yourself to caring for others is going to involve sacrifice.

And even just before you even become a pastor, before you enter the ministry, before you get that far, as I mentioned in my testimony, the issue for me coming to Christ was, is it going to be your way or is it going to be Christ's way?

And ultimately, when you come to Christ, you say, not my will, but yours be done. You say, I am not my own. I am bought with a price. I belong to Jesus. And so even from the get-go, a Christian, the life of a Christian is a life of sacrifice because you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him.

And that was the issue when I came to Christ. Is it going to be me pleasing Steve Hockmeyer, or is it going to be my life belongs to him? And then when that issue is settled, then if you are called to the ministry, and not all who are Christians, of course, are called to the ministry, but when you are, you know that it's going to involve not making a name for yourself, not seeking the praise of men, not seeking to please men and have their applause, but to please your master in heaven, even when people don't appreciate you.

And there, there is a sacrifice involved in loving people that much, that you're going to love them and serve them, even when they kick you in the backside and you're going to still love and give yourself for them.

And so there's sacrifice involved in the self-denial, in giving yourself to preparation, giving yourself to study. In my life, I did work as an engineer, as I mentioned, for a couple of years, I worked in, as a sheet metal worker, I worked in a kennel, dog kennel when I was in high school, shoveling dog mess.

I've done all kinds of work, but the hardest job I've ever had has been a pastor. Whether that's on the mission field or in the United States, it involves sacrifice. You must renounce yourself. And so the sacrifice of the shepherd, that's a lot.

But then the second part of the message that, and I didn't make up the title, I didn't choose the topic, but this was what I was requested to speak on, is the shepherd's care for the flock. And when you think of caring for a flock, of course, there's a negative example.

There's the shepherds of Israel and they didn't feed the flock, they didn't care for the sick, they didn't seek the scattered, but rather they made themselves fat. And there are shepherds, pastors, whatever you want to call them, out there who are getting fat.

And I'm not talking about their physical girth. I'm talking about their bank accounts and they're in it for themselves. And whatever they say, however they promote themselves, it's about themselves. And that's the negative example.

And the scathing rebuke that the Lord heaps upon them in Ezekiel 34 is well-deserved. But then there's the positive example in Ezekiel 35. I'm going to turn to Ezekiel 34 there, by the way, is what God says, I'm going to shepherd them.