Tom Ascol - Impersonating a Shepherd

Once again, if you were not with us last night, I had stated that this gentleman who's coming to bring us the

Word is a man who's made a tremendous impact upon my life. Certainly he has given me confidence at a time when

I was at a former church. I honestly thought that I must be going insane because everybody told me, you know, don't worry about doctrine, don't worry about anything else.

Certainly what we need to be concerned about are just getting more numbers and so forth. So that's how we know God is working in our midst.

Someone did direct me to the Founders website, and through that, as I'm sure with many of you,

I found tremendous encouragement. Now that has only been buttress by the time that I've gotten to know this man, who has ministered to me and my family, and how much

I do appreciate his heart for the gospel. Will you please welcome

Dr. Tom Askell. Mike, just because doctrine is important doesn't mean you're not going crazy.

I want to make sure that you get that clear. I appreciate the invitation to be here and part of this conference.

It's a joy for me to be here. I appreciate the conference brochure and the references to how old

I am. However, I think if you look at the photos, David looks like my father, but Burke looks like my older brother.

So in terms of the photos, I may be the youngest one here. It's always disconcerting when you speak in one of the latter times of a conference because you're nervous that everybody else is going to get your text.

You could probably figure out what my text is. It's Acts 20. It's the text that's been referred to by every speaker thus far in this conference.

So I'm glad that you're already familiar with it and invite you to open your Bibles there. To that particular passage, the theme that I have been given to address is impersonating a shepherd, false shepherds, false teachers.

Well, this has been a bane upon the people of God, upon the church of God. From the very beginning, false teachers have been some of the devil's greatest instruments in accomplishing his tasks, his goals being pursued to overthrow the kingdom of God in the world.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11, beginning in verse 14, For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

Therefore it's no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness whose end will be according to their works.

The first sin that was committed on earth by human beings was directly tied to the temptation from the devil to cause

Eve to doubt the veracity of God's word, to cast aspersion on it, to raise questions in her mind about it.

And that particular strategy of the devil has not changed throughout human history.

He employs false teachers, false prophets to fulfill that same work.

Under the old covenant, God's people were warned against false prophets. They were told false prophets would come among them.

In Deuteronomy 13, they were told what to do about them. When a man was discovered to be a false prophet, he was to have his ministry ended with stoning.

It was a capital crime. Spiritually misleading God's people was regarded as abusive.

It was recognized as deadly and false priests and prophets were regarded as worse criminals than unrighteous and corrupt kings.

Why is that? Because without justice, a nation suffers, but without truth, a people will die.

And we saw that in the history of the Old Testament in both Israel and Judah.

Under the ministry of false teachers, truth fell in the streets. God's people were led into apostasy.

Jeremiah, the prophet, spent over 40 years lamenting and preaching against false shepherds who were leading

God's people astray in his day. He spoke God's word, explaining the

Babylonian judgment that ultimately came upon Judah. Listen to what he says in Jeremiah 6.

Because from the least of them, even to the greatest of them, everyone is given to covetousness.

And from the prophet, even to the priest, everyone deals falsely. They have all healed the hurt of my people slightly, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

He is uncovering the false ministries of false messengers purporting to speak the word of the

Lord. Jeremiah wept over the sorry state of his people. He wept and became angry against those who were responsible for leading them in their false paths.

He knew where to lay the blame. In Jeremiah 23, 11, he says both prophet and priest are profane.

They preached lies to God's people. They covered up the truth and hid it from them. And in chapter 23 and verses 21 and 22, he delivers this scathing rebuke from the

Lord against them. He writes, I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran.

They were industrious and zealous, but they were not sent of God. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.

But if they had stood in my counsel and caused my people to hear my words, then they would have turned from their evil way and from the evil of their doings.

The concern over false teachers was not diminished in the day of the

New Testament scriptures. Even though the church no longer bears the physical sword in order to carry out

God's punishment against them, we should never stop thinking about the seriousness of misrepresenting

God or his word among God's people. We should not think that it's diminished at all.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said this, beware of false prophets who come among you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

J .C. Ryle rightly notes, nothing seems so offensive to Christ as a false teacher of religion, a false prophet, or a false shepherd.

Nothing ought to be so much feared by the church, be so plainly rebuked, opposed, and exposed.

This was obviously a burden the Apostle Paul sensed as well. He spends much time contending against false teachers who threaten the spiritual lives of the churches that he himself planted.

He warned church leaders to own their own responsibility in doing the same.

In addition, his letters, pastoral letters, to Timothy and to Titus, are replete with these types of admonition.

Part of a true shepherd's job is to protect the sheep from false shepherds, from false teachers.

In order for churches to be spared the devastating consequences of false shepherds, they themselves must seek out and seek to have established among them those who are true shepherds, shepherds after God's own heart, who will conscientiously care for God's people.

This is part of the burden of the Apostle Paul as he addresses those elders from Ephesus.

We've had the context set before us. We've had the whole passage read for us from our previous speakers, and I'm not going to do that again.

I'm simply going to call your attention to one verse out of Acts chapter 20, where the

Apostle Paul, speaking to these men whom he loved in this perhaps most touching of scenes that we have in all of the

New Testament, especially of all of the writing in Acts, where Paul is talking to these men whom he himself helped set apart to the ministry of shepherding, of serving as elders in the church.

In verse 28, he says, "'Therefore, take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the

Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.'"

Now, this verse is filled with insight regarding the life and ministry of a local church, specifically as that life and ministry relate to the duties of its officers.

Paul's admonition is expressed in terms of an imperative verb, a command, which in its most basic form is a charge to elders to shepherd the church of God.

Take heed, he says basically, to shepherd the church of God, to shepherd them.

This relates back to that fundamental verb of taking heed and thus the phrase indicates the purpose for which the command is given.

In other words, Paul is saying this, take heed to yourselves and the flock for the purpose of shepherding the church of God.

If the church is gonna be rightly shepherded, it will be done so only as this command is obeyed.

So what do we learn from this verse about the work of faithful shepherds in contrast to those who would impersonate shepherds of God's flock?

Well, primarily we learn this, that God gives elders to a church in order to care for the welfare of his people.

It is God's way of protecting and caring for his people. In this text, the apostle admonishes those elders whom he served with for three years in Ephesus to comprehensively care for God's church.

Now, this responsibility is seen in the language, the metaphor which the apostle employs.

He says they are to shepherd the church of God. That word shepherd just screams out comprehensiveness.

Sometimes it's lost in some of the older English translations where it reads feed the church, but it's literally the word shepherd in its verb form that the apostle

Paul employs here. It's do the work of a shepherd. It includes the whole office of shepherding, the leading that we heard about this morning and guiding and guarding and gathering as well as the feeding of God's people.

The metaphor requires a broad understanding of the duties that Paul has in mind. He employs this metaphor in order to graphically portray all that would be included in the elder's responsibility.

This is a full -time responsibility for a man who is placed in this position. It's an ongoing task.

Think of what a shepherd's life was like who literally cared for real sheep.

It wasn't a nine to five job. There weren't any narrowly defined responsibilities.

It included the feeding of the flock and leading them in proper paths, making decisions in order of where and how to expend energies and resources that would benefit the flock.

It involved protecting the flock. You recall David's own testimony about his life as a shepherd of his father's sheep, how he had to protect them from the lion and the bear.

And then Paul, just a few verses down, as James reminded us a few moments ago, warns these very elders in Ephesus of the impending dangers to God's flock when he says, from among yourselves, in verse 29, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

And also from among yourselves, men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves.

A shepherd is to feed God's people. The word of God is the food. He's to lead

God's people according to the will of God revealed. He is to protect God's people from those who would come in and as ravenous wolves, lead the disciples away from the word of God.

This work of shepherding is directed to all the flock, each and every member, regardless of how awkward or difficult those members might be.

And there are some awkward sheep in God's churches. John chapter 10, verse three, where Jesus speaks of himself as the good shepherd, he says that he calls his sheep by name.

And if we're going to be shepherds who serve the church in that capacity, then we must know the people whom the

Lord has granted to us to watch for and to lead and to feed.

The picture that the apostle Paul employs in his admonition to these elders is one that is frequently used in the

Bible. The idea of shepherding we find throughout Old and New Testaments.

Much of what is involved in the task involves not only the specific duties, but the spirit in which those duties are to be carried out.

And we see this in the way that God describes himself as a shepherd. Psalm 23 that we heard from this morning.

Psalm 77, where God describes himself as leading his people like a flock.

Jesus called himself the good shepherd. Peter describes him as the shepherd of our souls.

In Hebrews 13, he said to be that great shepherd of the sheep. And if we are going to serve as men in the gospel ministry given to the church by God himself for the purpose of caring comprehensively for God's people, we must not only employ our efforts and all the tasks that are included, but we must seek to carry out those tasks in the spirit of our

God and Jesus Christ, his son, who is our great shepherd. This responsibility to shepherd the flock is a matter of stewardship.

Because we hear Paul saying that these men are to shepherd the church of God.

It belongs to God. And this is a church among which the

Holy Spirit has made you to be elders or overseers. The one who has given you to this task is

God himself. Every elder must recognize in fulfilling his ministerial responsibility that he stands as a steward before God.

And the authority that has been entrusted to his hands is an authority that has been granted to him by God by virtue of his office.

Anyone who reads the Bible with any kind of sensitivity recognizes that the work of shepherding, overseeing, pastoring necessarily includes wielding authority.

There must be the use of authority. And that means there must be care in the exercise and use of that authority.

Such men who are to shepherd God's church are commanded to do so. And so the work cannot be fulfilled without obedience to that command and the specific responsibilities that are included in it.

It's important then to distinguish between the kinds of authority that exist and what kind of authority is granted to those who are called to shepherd the flock of God.

That authority is official. It's not personal. It is a vested authority.

It's the difference between the authority of Shaquille O 'Neal and a police officer.

When Shaquille O 'Neal wants to take the ball and go to the basket for a dunk, the best athletes in the world aren't going to stop him.

It doesn't matter how strong they are, how good their intentions. When he decides to go to the hoop, he's going to go there.

And the commentators say he goes with authority because he has inherent authority to get that ball to the hoop.

But whenever a little five foot eight traffic cop sticks his hand up out on the middle of Interstate 4 and stops tons and tons of steel by virtue of his ability to do so, it's not because he has inherent authority, it's because he has a badge on and he represents the state and the state has vested authority in him.

In the same way, elders, pastors have vested authority, not inherent authority that they exercise as they fulfill their responsibilities.

Elders function as men among men. They are elders among which the

Holy Spirit, or literally we could say in which, not over which in this passage, the

Spirit has made you overseers. Elders are recognized from among the flock of God and they continue among the flock of God.

They are not exalted over the flock of God as some kind of distinct superior class of Christians.

Their authority is official, not personal. It is vested, not inherent.

This is something both pastor and people need to recognize. My brother, fellow pastors, we need to realize that we are not necessarily inherently smarter or nobler or spiritually superior to those whom we have had the responsibility and trusted to us to shepherd.

We have authority among them because it's been granted to us from God and therefore we should carry out our responsibilities and exercise that authority, not with any kind of haughty spirit as if we are something inherently in and of ourselves that others are not.

One thing that we pastors need to remember is that along with being shepherds, we're also sheep.

We also need to be guided, to be fed, to be protected.

And the very same struggles that our people deal with are struggles that we ourselves have.

And to pretend that that is not true is to send a false message to the flock of God.

To suggest that somehow we have entered into some kind of sphere or some kind of orbit or reality where we are now free from the normal responsibilities, the normal struggles, the normal joys of being a sheep of Jesus Christ is to send a false message and to misrepresent our

Lord and Savior and His gospel. Pastors struggle with temptations just as others do.

They need divine strength and wisdom just as everyone else. They also are frail creatures of dust and they should never forget it and should never pretend that it is not so.

An elder is also a man who has been appointed by God. He fulfills his function in the church as one whom the church has recognized is called and equipped of God.

So when he comes to that responsibility and is placed in that office, he does so with a sober awareness that it is

God who through the church has placed him there. Consequently, as a man who must wield authority, he himself is a man under authority and therefore accountable.

He will shepherd the church that belongs to God. It's God's church and the accounting will be given to God.

In Hebrews 13, 17, as the people of God are admonished to follow or obey those who have the rule over them, they are reminded to do so so that shepherds under shepherds might do their work with joy and not with grief.

And also reminded that these are men who carry out their shepherding responsibilities as those who must give an account.

So we serve shepherds, elders, not as lords, but as servants.

And we serve not as chief shepherds, but as under shepherds. And when we exercise the authority that God has vested in the office, we have no right to do so with an authoritarian high handedness.

We have no right to seek to use our office in order to exercise authority beyond the spheres of responsibility that God has given to us as shepherds of the flock.

I don't see how anyone can misunderstand that in the light of what the apostle Peter writes in 1

Peter 5, the first four verses he says, the elders who are among you

I exhort, I who am a fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed, shepherd the flock of God, which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion, but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly, not as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.

The work that God entrusts to the elders of the church is to shepherd his church, is to care for God's people in a comprehensive way.

But how is this to be done? I mean, specifically, what is involved in this responsibility?

I've touched on some of these things already. We've heard other dimensions of this in the previous messages of this conference, but I want to direct your attention to the first part of our verse back in Acts 20, 28, because there are two major concerns that Paul has that must not be neglected if God's people are to be properly shepherded.

You see them, they're there, very clearly set before us in this text.

The care that we are to exercise must be executed by focusing on these two major responsibilities.

The essence of this call is to shepherd the flock of God. The method of how this is carried out is distilled in those words that come across to us as take heed, pay very careful attention to be watchful of,

Paul says. He says that these elders are to be extremely watchful, conscientious about two large areas of responsibilities, namely yourself and the flock.

And notice that they are to do this for the purpose of shepherding God's flock.

Now I want to look at these two areas of responsibilities in the opposite order in which they are found in the text.

So first, what does Paul mean when he says take heed to the flock?

What is this flock? Well, I don't want to push this too far, but it certainly helps us to think about it, to recognize that he says flock and not herd.

It's sheep who are led and not to be driven. They are vulnerable creatures, unable to defend themselves and care for themselves, dependent upon the right guidance, the right feeding, the right protection by their shepherd.

It is a particular flock that Paul has in mind. He's speaking to these men whom God has called to be elders in Ephesus.

And so he tells them that they are to shepherd that church of God that is particularly there with them in Ephesus.

And it is a divinely possessed flock, the church of God. And think of what

God's attitude is toward his church. He loves his church. He created his church.

He provides for his church. So how is a shepherd serving under the

Lordship of Jesus Christ, the chief shepherd to treat God's flock?

With disdain, with disloyalty, with a lack of love, with impatience?

To do so is to miscommunicate and misrepresent our great shepherd who deals with us in exactly the opposite ways of that.

He's patient with us. He's merciful with us. He suffers long with us.

He's laid down his life for us. He has given us all that we need for this life and for eternity.

And to take heed to the flock, a shepherd, an elder must consider its needs.

What are the needs of the people of God? Well, in general, all sheep have the same basic needs.

There's the need for nourishment and protection and guidance, the need for instruction and for being led in proper places where they will be secure.

But particular flocks have particular needs as well. And this is evidenced by the variety of issues that we see addressed in the

New Testament letters to the different churches. Some flocks might find themselves in a season of being undermined by false teaching, and they will desperately be in need of the kind of shepherding that can rebuke and convince and exhort and protect them from false teaching and false teachers.

Other flocks might be going through a season where the candle of their love for Jesus Christ is burning low and there seems to be spiritual apathy and lethargy setting in, and they need to be exhorted and loved and reminded and called to consider again their first love.

And it's the responsibility of shepherds in local churches to so know and so study and so be concerned with their own responsibilities among that particular flock of God that they can recognize the peculiar needs at peculiar times for those sheep.

And then within any church, particular sheep in the same flock have particular needs.

You have people in churches that have been fleeced by false shepherds.

You have people in churches that are young and inexperienced. You have sheep in churches that are awkward and they're going to struggle with their awkward issues perhaps all of their lives.

They're going to be like little faith in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, who though he makes it to the celestial city, does so with his precious things having been stolen from him.

He struggles with assurance all the journey. And a shepherd needs to recognize the variety of needs within a congregation, helping the strong as well as the weak and the mature as well as the inexperienced.

And so a true shepherd will be studiously attentive to properly care for the church.

But the second of these responsibilities in verse 28 is even more important.

Paul says, take heed to yourselves. I've reserved it for second for the very reason that Paul put it first.

Paul put it first as a matter of emphasis and priority and I reserved it for second for the same reason.

And the point is this, the man is more important than the ministry.

The shepherd is more important than the work of shepherding.

In order to fulfill the responsibilities that God has called us to do as pastors, we must take heed to ourselves in order that we can properly take heed to the flock.

I mean, what is a pastor? He's an elder, he's a leader, he's an overseer. He is a man among men, both a shepherd and a sheep.

He's a minister among priests. He is a ruler among kings.

And it's wonderful when a church has a plurality of elders so that one man is not simply trying to do all of this work on his own, but he is joined by comrades and those to whom he makes himself vulnerable and opens his life so that together they might all be shepherded as they seek collectively to shepherd the church of God.

Every pastor needs a pastor. And the pastor who doesn't recognize this, the pastor who thinks that he can be the lone ranger out there doing it on his own without opening his life to others who will help shepherd him, whether they are in the particular flock or not, is a man who's setting himself up for a horrible fall.

The apostle Paul was not immune to this. He had these very same needs.

You remember in 2 Corinthians 7, he talks about Macedonia being there. He said there were just conflicts without, there were fears within, but God who comforts those who are downcast comforted me.

How? By sending Titus, sent a fellow elder, sent a pastor to me.

You remember when he writes to the church at Philippi and he commends Epaphroditus back to them from whom he had come.

He says, God spared me sorrow upon sorrow by healing Epaphroditus.

Near the end of his life, the last thing that we know that he wrote in 2 Timothy 4, he's writing to Timothy and he's talking about how he's been forsaken by those who should have stood with him.

And he says, come quickly if you can, come before winter. He needed, he sensed that need for that fellow pastoral responsive relationship to help care and comfort for his own soul.

Well, how does a pastor take heed to himself? Well, he must remember that he himself is a redeemed sinner, that he himself needs to grow in grace.

He himself needs to discipline his life. He himself needs to mortify his flesh.

He himself needs to grow in experiencing forgiveness, believing in forgiveness and granting forgiveness.

In other words, he must strive to become a better Christian. It's a curse upon a church to have pastors who make their call to ministry more important than their call to discipleship, who are more concerned with public duties than with private responsibilities, more dedicated to ministry than to Christ.

Well, what's the relationship of this responsibility of taking heed to yourself, to the whole work of shepherding the flock?

Well, on one hand, this is the most neglected duty among ministers.

And the sad state of the ministry is an unfortunate commentary on this.

Brothers, fellow ministers, every time we hear of one of our own who has fallen, it ought to sober us and rock us and cause us to examine ourselves.

Better men than you and me, better men than you and me, more zealous, more determined, more promising, more gifted men than you and me have fallen away from their pastoral responsibilities by neglecting this admonition to take heed to themselves.

Jesus praying for his disciples, those few men in whose hands the advance of the kingdom would be left after his ascension.

He prays for them in John 17, Father, sanctify them, make them holy, sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.

An elder bears the responsibility to maintain his life for the sake of shepherding the flock.

Charles Spurgeon talked about a man whose life showed such discrepancy between what he was publicly and what he was privately that he said, whenever he was in the pulpit, he ought never to leave it.

And whenever he was out of the pulpit, he ought never to go into it again. And we don't want to be such men.

We must see this as the most important duty that we have as ministers of the gospel, as shepherds of God's flock.

You can be a Christian without being an elder, but you cannot be an elder without being a

Christian. And if we keep the priorities straight, and we realize that in order to serve the church and fulfilling the calling that God's granted to us, one of the great priorities of my life must be to diligently discipline my life, to seek to be all that God's called me to be first and foremost, as a disciple of Jesus, to believe the gospel for myself, to understand and read the scriptures and apply the scriptures to my life for my salvation, for my sanctification, for my progress and holiness in moving toward the celestial city.

If we do that, brothers and sisters, it is not in competition to our work in serving the church of God.

A man does that as a part of a very inherent, integral, vital part of the work of serving as a shepherd of God's flock.

We're called to be examples. And so that ought to give us pause and ask these questions.

How much secret prayer would be taking place in the church that I serve if everyone prayed the way

I do? How much zeal to see unconverted people come to Jesus Christ would there be living in the church

I serve if everyone had the level of zeal that I have? How much humility would there be in the church if everyone pursued humility to the degree and in the way that I do?

Charles Bridges wrote this, a man who cannot convince himself to be holy will have little hope of succeeding in convincing others.

And so we must deal with our own hearts. We must mortify our own sins.

We must take the gospel and ruthlessly apply it to our lives so that we might be better equipped to apply it to the lives of the people whom we shepherd.

The spiritual life and health of the church depends upon our heeding this admonition to take care of our own souls.

This is what Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4 .16, take heed to yourself and to the doctrine, continue in them for in doing this, you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

It's the only verse I know of in all the Bible that guarantees evangelistic results.

Take heed to yourself and the doctrine. Well, it's the most neglected duty.

It's the most important duty. It's also the most difficult duty. It's easy to preach compared to mortification.

Puritan said, it's easier to preach down a thousand sins in others than it is to mortify one sin in your own soul.

We are confronted with the danger of professionalism all around us in our day, so that we are tempted the same way that the

Shulamite was in the Song of Songs where she says, I have tended others vineyards, but my own vineyard

I've neglected. Listen to the words of Henry Martin, the missionary to India in the 19th century.

He writes, I see how great are the temptations of a missionary to neglect his own soul.

Apparently outwardly employed for God, my heart has been growing more hard and proud.

Brothers, has that ever happened to you? I know what he's talking about. Let me be taught that the first great business on earth is the sanctification of my own soul.

Soul shall I be rendered more capable also of performing the duties of the ministry in a holy, solemn manner.

God give us such men to shepherd our churches. God make us such men who are in the positions having been called to shepherd

God's flock. Well, this care that shepherds are to exercise in caring for God's people comprehensively must be motivated by God's own

Trinitarian interest in the flock. You see the Trinity of God in Acts 20, 28.

The work to which we are called is hard. What'll keep a man persevering in it? By remembering God's own interest in the work.

God has a personal claim of this church whom we seek to serve day in and day out, week in and week out.

It is the church of God. God himself has chosen this church. God himself has provided for this church.

He's provided for it directly by his spirit. The spirit is the one who makes men to serve as overseers among the flock.

He has cost, at great cost, purchased this church. That phrase is so profound, we must meditate on it, that he's purchased with his own blood, with his own blood.

Paul here doesn't take time to parse out the words here to distinguish between God the

Father and God the Son. He says, God purchased this church with his own blood.

And when Paul admonishes the strong Christians to bear with the weak Christians in Romans 14, do you remember how he does so, how he motivates those strong Christians?

He said, will you for your liberty destroy one for whom Jesus died?

Jesus shed his blood for this church. Christ came from eternity.

Christ came from heaven in order to seek and to save this church. This church belongs to him.

He had these people on his heart, on his mind when he was hanging up on the cross. It was out of his love for them and bringing glory to his father that he shed his blood for them.

Can't we then bear with them and seek to serve them out of this great concern that our

Trinitarian God has shown in bringing this church into existence? Listen to the words of the

Puritan Richard Baxter. Oh, then let us hear these arguments of Christ.

Whenever we feel ourselves to grow dull and careless, hear this, did

I die for these souls? And will thou not look after them? Were they worth my blood?

Or are they not worth thy labor? Did I come down from heaven to earth to seek and to save that which was lost?

And will thou not go to the next door or the next street or village to seek them?

How small is thy condescension and labor compared to mine? I debased myself to this, but it is thy honor to be so employed.

Have I done and suffered so much for their salvation? And was I willing to make thee a fellow worker with me?

And thou refuse to do that little which lieth upon thy hands?

My fellow elders, we need to regularly remind ourselves of what it is we have been called to do and what this entity is that we refer to as the church.

This is God's possession. This is Christ's purchase. This is his ride.

And we bear the responsibility of taking all that Jesus has accomplished by his life and death and resurrection and heavenly session for his people and applying it to his people and bringing it back to their understanding and helping them to realize again and again and again, all that they have in Christ, all that God has afforded to them in the person of his son, through the work of his son, so that they might grow more and more in conformity to him.

And we must not edit that gospel. We must not shy away from anything that's been revealed in Holy Scripture.

We must not think ourselves wiser than God by skipping over or adding to that which has been given, but in humility, as under shepherds of the chief shepherd, we take from his hand that which he's provided in the word and we seek to give it to God's people.

Listen to these words of David Porter, a minister from an earlier age. He writes, ministers of the gospel hold a place of immense responsibility to God and the souls of men.

If they suppress the truth as it is in Jesus, for fear of offending their hearers, if they substitute lackness of principle for the doctrines of the cross, dry external morality for practical godliness, they do it at an awful peril.

They're not placed on Jerusalem's wall to amuse the multitude with a mock religion in human attire.

They are not sent forth to fabricate new theories or gloss the truth, to render it less offensive to the carnal heart.

For no such end was the Christian ministry instituted. The gospel heralds are not at liberty thus to aspire.

They are ambassadors from God to deliver his message in the true spirit and genuine simplicity that it is given.

If they depart from this through cowardice or thirst for popular applause, they are no longer ambassadors of Christ, but traitors to his cause.

And can there be a higher crime committed against the supreme majesty than coming out under a cloak of friendship for Christ and then aiming destruction at his throne?

Verily, God will not hold them guiltless. Such treachery will not escape with impunity.

And with what face will the unfaithful preacher meet his hearers at the judgment bar?

He had taught his hearers, but it taught them to disbelieve. He had confirmed them in their guilt by refusing to expose it.

He had blinded their eyes about God by keeping God's character out of sight.

He had feasted their pride when they needed humbling. He had pleased their fancies at the expense of their souls.

He had inflated them with expectations of heaven when on the brink of destruction and closed their eyes, giving them

God's speed with a lie in their right hand. And how is he to settle this account on the day of final reckoning?

How is he to clear himself from the blood of souls? With what will he frame his plea in self -defense against his flock who are thus accusing him and upbraiding him with these words?

We were your flock and you were our shepherd. With you were the treasures of knowledge and truth.

And why did you withhold from us the message you were sent to deliver? We are undone forever through your unfaithfulness.

You never taught us the character of our judge nor the truth of his word. The doctrines you taught us to despise, we find to be the truth of God.

You allowed us to sport with his sovereignty and decrees. And in this, you did awfully deceive us.

You reproved us politely for disgraceful crimes, but never described to us the sin of our nature.

When we were sometimes alarmed at our state and prospects, you hushed our fears by crying, peace, peace.

Whereas God had said, there is no peace to the wicked. How overwhelmed with guilt and horror will such preachers be with their deceived hearers on the great day?

It is a high and holy call. It is a sorrow full of joy, as John Newton called it.

It is a stewardship and responsibility that we should receive with the awareness that we one day will stand and give an account to that great shepherd of our souls.

Brothers, fellow elders with me, we must pray and ask those whom we serve to pray with us that God will grant us to fulfill our calling in the power and according to the directive of God's word and spirit.

May God grant our churches such men. May God make those of us in the responsibilities now to be such men.

Let's pray. Father, we praise you for your wisdom that is put on display in the church.

The church that you, through the person of your son, purchased with your own blood.

We thank you for Jesus Christ, our Lord. We thank you for his successful ministry in securing redemption for those whom you chose from before the foundation of the world.

We thank you for the bride of Christ that we are promised will be adorned with pure white linen on the day of his return.

And we ask that you would grant to your churches on earth, men who are shepherds after your own heart, who will fulfill the responsibilities of taking heed to themselves and to the flock among which you by the power of your spirit have made them to serve as overseers.

And Lord, for those of us in this awesome position in office, grant to us what we need by the power of that spirit.