The Charge To Don Smith

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is a special episode where we are ordaining to the office of Elder Don Smith So as you listen to this may it inspire you to pray for your church and for her elders

And if the Lord is calling you to the office of Elder that you would consider it carefully

Joyfully because it is a heavy and a holy burden With that God bless you.

I'm long -winded But I would like to charge our brother with what this office entails then

I'd like to invite Harold to come with me and us lay hands on Don and pray for Don and Then I would like for Don and I to serve communion together

Which is a a beautiful and I consider it to be the greatest privilege of my life to serve communion

I walk away every week with with my face muscles hurting from how much I'm smiling

And I'm not even kidding like it really it's it's a workout but the reason it's so important is because we get to in a moment of our lives we get to portray the role of Jesus Christ to his bride and You portray the role of the church receiving from him his good blessings

And it is it is a powerful and yet beautiful thing that happens. So dear

Don I Want to read first a second Timothy two three and four and then

I want to share some long -winded exhortations And I put it in the

King James Don likes the King James so do

I Thou therefore endure hardness as a good shepherd of Jesus Christ No man that woreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him who hath chosen him to Be a soldier

The first thing I'd like to charge you with brother is to lift up your head Today is not just a mere ceremony today is a commissioning

Today the Lord of hosts takes a man out of the ranks and sets him on the front lines

Today he hands you a staff and the staff is also a sword today. He puts words in your mouth that will outlive your bones

Do you feel the weight of it? I? Know you do Because every man who has ever stood where you were standing has felt the floor shaking underneath him

Moses trembled Isaiah cried Whoa, Jeremiah said he was but a child in the presence of God Paul said he was the chief of sinners and if your knees are steady right now it is only because the

Lord is holding them and That brother is the only reason any of us stand at all as Jude says

That he may make us not stumble until the day he presents us to our Lord. So lift up your head

Not because you are great, but because the one who is great has called you into his service and he doesn't lose the war

The second thing I would like to charge you with my brother is preach the word Preach it bloody and preach it plain 2nd

Timothy 4 1 I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ Who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and at his kingdom to preach the word?

Be instant in season and out of season which means all seasons Reprove rebuke exhort with all long -suffering and doctrine

Don The first charge is the oldest charge preach the word Not your opinions

Not your feelings Not the shifting consensus of our generation

Not the safe platitudes that will earn the invitations to the right dinners and homes the word the very breath of God exhaled in Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek carried across centuries on the backs of the bloodied backs of martyrs and delivered now into your hands

When you open that book on the Lord's Day You are not offering up Don Smith you are detonating ordinances written by God Every sermon every sermon is a siege engine rolled up to the gates of hell firing

Shots at the enemy every text is a hammer and every hammer is looking for a rock to break so preach it

Preach it when the room is full and preach it when the room is three old ladies and a sleeping deacon Preach it when it costs you friends

Preach it when it costs you sleep Preach it when the culture laughs and preach it when the culture rages because the laughter and the rage of the enemies

Are the same animal with two faces and neither one of them gets to edit your sermons

Reprove rebuke exhort That is not three words for the same thing.

That is the full armory Reprove the error Don rebuke the sin and exhort the saint and Do all three with long -suffering?

Because all of us are slow to learn and shepherds are not permitted to be cruel

But long -suffering is not silence long -suffering is patient warfare. So do it as a good soldier of Christ The third thing

I would like you to be exhorted with is to feed the sheep and to kill the wolves first Peter 5 2 & 3 feed the flock of God which is among you taking the oversight thereof not by Constraint but willingly not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind neither as being lords over God's heritage

But at but being in samples to the flock John Calvin says that the two great works of the pastor is to feed the lambs and To kill the wolves and that is your two works that you were called to You can't choose just one if you feed the sheep

You must kill the wolves if you do one without the other you fail both So feed them that is the glad part of the work stand in the green pastures of God's Word and call them by name

Break the bread small enough for the weakest little lamb and still rich enough to satisfy the strongest ox

Do not starve them with novelty do not poison them with cleverness Give them

Christ Give them Christ Give them Christ Give them

Christ in Genesis and give them Christ in Revelation and give them Christ in every verse in between Because every verse has his fingerprints on it.

Your job is to point them out But brother the staff that guides the land also the lambs must also break the wolves teeth

You will not be a faithful shepherd. If you only know how to be gentle the wolves are real They wear wool

Now they quote scripture now They publish books and build platforms and weep on cue

Now and they're coming for the flock that the Lord God has bought with his own blood to which he has called you to be overseer

So you have to stand between them and the wolf You will have the bite marks on you

Before he ever gets to them You will stand between the false teacher and the young mother who's tired

You will stand between the seducing spirit and the teenage boy who's curious You will stand between the smooth mouth and the sheep who have no defense.

It's not an optional work. It's your ordination and when you stand with scripture in your mouth and the fear of God in your eyes a wolf neither will stay or Stand because he cannot stay or stand in the presence of God's Word the fourth thing

I would like to charge you with is to remember that you are not losing and for you to preach and teach and counsel and Think and move and have your being like you've already won 1st

Corinthians 15 25 for he must reign until he has put all of his enemies under his feet the last enemy that shall be

Destroyed is death Don there is a pulpit that is sick today a

Pulpit that retreats today it preaches the rapture of the frightened It tells young men that the church was born to lose that the kingdoms of this world are the kingdoms of forever and That Christ shall only reign after he quits the fields and comes back to clean up what the bride couldn't hold

That is not the gospel of Matthew chapter 28 that is not the gospel of Psalm chapter 2

That is not the gospel of Daniel 2 or Isaiah 9 or Revelation 11 The Word of the

Lord is your gospel and he must reign and he will reign

Not he might reign if the conditions are favorable He must reign until every last enemy is a footstool for his feet and the last enemy on that list is death

So until death is defeated reign with that word knowing that that word wins and that word prevails and Preach like you believe it preach like the stone cut out without hands is actually rolling and growing and really grinding the

Images of this world into powder and really is filling the whole worth the whole earth with the glory of God Preach like the mustard seed really is becoming a tree both in this

Congregation and the life of our members as well as the Universal Church Preach like the leaven really is working its way through the whole lump preach like the meek really are going to inherit the earth because Jesus said so and Jesus does not misspeak

This doesn't make you a triumphalist. It doesn't make you a Pollyanna, but it does make you obedient It also doesn't make the battle easy

Just because we win does it mean we don't have scars and you will collect many being on the front line my friend

But a soldier knows who his king is and who that King and that that King wins so Don advance

Advance in your preaching Advance in your praying advance in your discipling of households advance when you invite people into your home advance in The planting of churches through this church advance in the building up and training up of young people

Advance in the training of the next generation of pastors take the ground

That has been lost one inch at a time until Jesus Christ reigns over it all whether in your lifetime or in the lifetime of your descendants but in all things advance the fifth thing that I would

Call you to is to guard your life Because the wolf is not only out there

First Timothy 4 16 take heed unto thyself and unto thy doctrine Continue in them for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee

Brother the shortest distance from the pulpit to future scandal is about seven inches from your head to your heart

It's about seven years of one private sin that no one noticed in year one and two

And I'm not trying to frighten you. I'm trying to help you The men who fall do not fall at the front

They fall in the study. They fall on their phones. They fall in their marriages

They fall in the quiet hours when no one's watching and they forget that someone is always watching because we do everything before the face of God so take heed to thyself as Martin Lloyd -jones once said take thyself in hand

I'm not Welsh. So that was my attempt and then

Take heed to the doctrine Not once continue Keep reading it keep learning from it

Keep sharpening being sharpened by it keeps sitting under it and stay in it the day that you stop studying is the day that you start stealing because you will be serving the sheep leftovers from a fire that you let ten years ago and You will be giving them the moldy pieces of yesterday's harvest

Stay in the word at all times and in all ways The sixth thing

I would tell you is to love your wife and to shepherd your children and in that order first Timothy 3 4 & 5

One that ruleth well his own house having his children in subjection with all gravity for if a man know not how to rule his own

House, how shall he take care of the Church of God Don your home is your first congregation and parish if you lose it

You forfeit the right to pastor anywhere else Paul doesn't suggest that he legislates that a man who cannot shepherd his own household cannot shepherd a congregation

Because a congregation is only a household much larger and you being a father with much more responsibility

Love your wife the way that Christ loves his church sacrificially sanctifying ly and sacramentally

Die a hundred small deaths for her every week and do not keep score

Listen to her like her voice matters above every other person on earth because it does let her sharpen you because she sees the sin that you hide from yourself a

Pastor with a bitter wife has already began to sink and the congregation will feel that sink over time

So love her well and care for her well, and you have a good wife Shepherds your children and teach them the catechisms and teach them to shoot straight and teach them that their father is not ashamed of Jesus Christ and that their father is

Bold and public as well as the dinner table Pray with them Discipline them with gravity and warmth and equal measure

Because the God of the Bible is both a consuming fire and the father who runs down the road to meet the prodigal son

He is both Do this first and do this well and do this every single day my friend

Because this it really is The most important charge that I could give you is love your wife and love your children and your ministry will flow out of that Number seven fear

God and fear nothing else Be strong and of good courage

Joshua 1 9 says do not be afraid Neither thou be dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee wherever so wheresoever thou goest

Don there's a spirit in our age that wants to put a leash on the pulpit. It doesn't always come with fangs

Sometimes it comes with smiles and grant applications Sometimes it comes with tax code

Sometimes it comes with a cousin at Thanksgiving who says that you're being a little too extra

However, it comes the demand will always be the same for you to be softened for you to shrink and for you to cower

And for you to apologize for the Word of God For you to shut up about that one verse

For you to preach a Jesus that's palatable to the modern man Who we all can swallow without any conviction

Brother that Jesus does not exist that Jesus is a false idol and the day you preach him is the day you commit treason

So do not do it fear God That is the whole posture of a faithful pastor fear him more than you fear the elder who threatens to leave

Fear him more than you fear the donor who stops giving because you talked about that thing

Fear him more than you fear the journalist the blogger the mob the state the Boston Globe who calls you a white supremacist

Because you read a book about gender to children and a library Fear him more than you fear your own failure

Because your failure is not the final word and his verdict is if you fear him properly you will not fear anything else

Because nothing else has teeth that can actually reach your soul The eighth thing that I would like to charge you with is finish and I say that word until intentionally finish 2nd

Timothy 4 7 and 8 I have fought a good fight. I have finished my grace my course

I've kept the faith henceforth There's laid up for me a crown of righteousness with the Lord which the

Lord the righteous judge shall give to me at that day Dawn today you begin and today is joyful There will be days that you're in the trenches though Today there's going to be hands on your shoulders and head there's going to be tears in the aisle

There's going to be a wife who weeps for joy There's going to be a proud congregation who serves you a ribeye steak on a beautiful platter

But tomorrow is Monday and Then the next day and On Monday the hands won't be on you anymore and there won't be as many tears and it will become commonplace and the meal will become

Tupperware and You'll sit at your desk With an empty page and a hard text at a funeral to preach or a marriage to counsel or a man who's struggling with pornography to care for That is when the charge becomes real

Today we feast we feast like Christians we feast before the battle because we know we win but we will walk into the battle and Your job is to finish

Your job is to finish the race and keep the faith and do not quit and do not drift and do not coast and Do not retire your sword before the

Lord retires you let you in Your deathbed still be swinging Paul did not write 2nd

Timothy 4 from a mountaintop. He wrote it from a dungeon Knowing that the executioner sword was already being sharpened for his own head and Paul says

I have finished Brother that is the only testimony that counts.

It's not how you start It's how you finish and I want you to finish. Well, the ninth thing that I would charge you with is

That we would you and I now come to the table of the Living Christ and serve his people and serve his lambs

Luke 22 19 and 20 and he took bread and he gave and he break it and he gave unto them saying this is my body

Which is given for you this do and remembrance of me Likewise also the cup after supper saying this is the

New Testament in my blood which is shed for you Don in the moment when you and I are going to stand at this table together for the first time and You and I are going to be feeding

Jesus's lambs. I want you to understand it rightly Your hands might shake and they should and your hands

May quake and they probably should You are not a master of ceremonies and neither am

I You are not a distributor of crackers and juice and cheap promises You are not the manager of a religious ritual

Brother when you stand behind that table you stand in the place of the Living Christ To serve and care for his bride

You represent him to her You speak with his voice to her You lift his bread and you pour his cup and what you say in that moment

She receives as if she received it from him Because you are a minister and he has authorized your hands to do what only his hands first did in that upper room

When you break the bread you are enacting the breaking of his body when you lift the cup You are proclaiming the pouring out of his blood the

Christ who fed the 5 ,000 is feeding his bride Again through you and every week through you

The Christ who said take eat is saying it again in your mouth and the saints who receive at this

Table are going to hear his voice in your voice Or they will hear nothing at all so feel the weight of that a

Pastor who represents Christ at the table must also imitate Christ at the table You cannot lift the bread on the

Lord's Day and refuse to be broken the rest of the week You cannot pour out the cup on Sunday and hoard your own life on Monday The man who provides over this meal must become the meal and must become a living testimony of this meal

To the same people who partake of it. That's the pattern. That's the whole calling That is what it means to be a pastor in the front lines of the

Good Shepherd who laid his life down for his sheep So when you stand at the table the table

Don give your body Give it by studying late when your eyes are burning and you have blood vessels popping out

Give it by driving across town at midnight when a family needs you Give it by visiting the dying and carrying the casket and rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep and Spending yourself until there's nothing left and then some more

Give it like a wrung -out towel in the hands of Christ That is the body that you offer to this congregation

That is the bread that you break and that is the wine that you pour which is the New Testament unto them

So let that be your life The last thing that I want to commission you with is for you to go.

I Want you to hear the charge of your brothers I want you to go and preach the word go and feed the sheep go and hunt the wolves go and guard your life go

And love your wife go and shepherd your children go and fear God and fear nothing else and finish the race

And go with me and serve the supper as a man who has been duly called and duly qualified To stand in his place for his people

And do it with love all your days Amen I want to invite Don.

I want to invite Harold up to pray for you Don. We're going to lay hands on you and pray Let us pray

Almighty God our father You are a good holy

And loving God Father we are grateful for this man. Oh lord. God that you have called

To the office of elder The highest offer office in your church.

Oh lord. God Father we pray that you might continue to equip this man

For all of the good work that lies ahead The work oh lord god of shepherding your people

Father we pray that this man would be able to do it with grace with mercy with love

Father we pray that you would give him the conviction of all things that are good and godly

We pray that you would watch over his soul. Oh lord Convict him quickly of his sin

That he would run to you And ask for forgiveness Father we pray that you would

Love Don Keep him father as your own throughout this life and into eternity

Father we pray oh lord god for his family Who oh lord will certainly feel the weight of his office

Equip them even now we pray oh lord god That father we pray for his wife and allow her oh lord god to stand strong with Don And see this through with him.

Oh lord god Father again, we are grateful for your leading and prompting upon this man

Upon the shepherd's church for bringing him forward and and approving his ordination

Father we now Declare this man to be set apart For the service of elder in the church of god

And in this church in particular Go before him and add every blessing of heaven to him we ask in jesus name.