Mark Dever on Spiritual Leadership

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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Reflecting on what the New Testament teaches about Christian leadership, John Piper has listed 18 marks of an elder or a spiritual leader, which

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I want to pass on to you. A person who would serve a church as an elder or any of us as spiritual leaders in the spheres of influence

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God gives us should be restful but also have a kind of restlessness.

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They will be, he says, optimistic, intense, self -controlled, thick -skinned, energetic, a hard thinker, articulate, able to teach, a good judge of character, tactful, theologically oriented, a dreamer, organized and efficient, decisive, persevering, and a lover.

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But at the heart of it all, he says, of true spiritual leadership, he says, are these five things. One, acknowledge your helplessness.

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All true spiritual leadership, Piper says, has its roots in desperation. Its roots in desperation.

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That is so true. Number two, meditate on and pray over the word. Number three, trust in God and hope in his promises.

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Number four, love both friend and foe. Number five, other people will come to glorify

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God because of his work. And that is our heartfelt desire. Along with Paul in Colossians 1, we say, we proclaim him admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ to this end

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I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. I hope that you see in all this that it is a great privilege to serve in leadership, and one that should not be missed.

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Some people may feel too busy, or like such work is just not worth it. If that thought's ever crossed your mind,

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I'm reminded, I know it's a very old illustration, but still it's in my mind. I'm reminded of what

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Gary Cooper said one time. He said, I'm glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not

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Gary Cooper. He said that when he rejected the role in Gone with the Wind. Friends, there are things a lot more important than wealth or fame that we can sometimes turn down without realizing the importance of what

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God is about. Paul says that being an elder is a noble task.

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He says it is good to desire it. That is a good and noble thing.

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I remember one of the times that I was most chilled in conversation ever was when I felt like I was in some

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C .S. Lewis story. I was talking with somebody in Cambridge, a guy who taught there. We were out at a meal.

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He was expressing his anger over a recent decision the city council had made. And as he went on and on, I recalled how typical it was of him to be upset and angry about authority.

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So I did a very un -Cambridge -like thing. I looked at him and asked him a simple question. I said, do you think that authority is bad?

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That's what I said, do you think that authority is bad? Now normally, when you're in a place like Cambridge, the response to a question like that is kind of condescending.

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You're looked at as naive for asking a simple question, and they give like 1 ,000 qualifications. But I was shocked by his un -nuanced, simple, direct, unqualified answer.

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Yes, and the more I thought about it, the more

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I thought how much that is like our fallen world. In our fallen world, the whole nature of authority has been distorted.

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The possibility of realizing its abuse is taken to be good and healthy. And of course, God's power, apart from God's goodness and his purposes, is always demonic.

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But suspicion of all authority and innate distrust of it is very, very bad.

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It reveals a lot more about the person questioning than it does about the authority. And it shows a cancerous degeneration in the capacity which

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God built in us in order to have us operate in his image as loving children of him.

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To live as he meant us to live, we have to be able to trust him. And we even have to be able to trust those made in his image that he puts over us in various ways in life.

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Everyone in the Bible from Adam and Eve to the rogue rulers in the book of Revelation show their evil fundamentally by denying

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God's authority and using it as if it were their own. And that makes me realize what a great privilege it is to have godly people in authority, to have godly leaders.

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Isn't that a great privilege? To have godly authority modeled and practiced for our benefit.

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What a great gift that is. To reject authority, as so many do in our day, is short -sighted and self -destructive.

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A world without authority would be like desires with no restraints. Like a car with no controls.

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An intersection with no traffic lights. A game with no rules.

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A home with no parents. A world with no

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God. It could go on for a little while, but before long it would seem pointless, and then cruel, and then finally unutterably tragic.

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Well, who would have thought that all of this would come from a discussion of church polity? But it does. Our exercise of leadership in the church relates to God's nature and character.

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Friends, when we exercise proper authority through the law, or around the family table, or in our jobs, or in the scout troop, or in our homes, or especially in the church, we are helping to display

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God's image to his creation. That is our call, and that is our privilege. He has supplied us with leaders that he knows, that teach the truth, that love

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God above their own gain, that will lay down their lives for his sheep. And any kind of true

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Christian leadership we ever give, or for that matter, any kind of true Christian faith we ever have, will involve that kind of love.

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Lifting up Christ is the point of all this. We are sinful and separated from him.

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God has loved us in Christ. He has given us salvation through Christ's death on the cross, if we will only turn from our sins and trust in him.

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The life of every person you've seen stand up has been given in some part to proclaiming that message through this local congregation.

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They're pictures of the love of Christ, and they're meant to encourage you.

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To that same end, Christ is our Lord. Let's follow him as our example.