The Role of the Pastor, 1 Timothy 5:17-19, 2 Timothy 4:1-2, Titus 2:15

First, Timothy, chapter five, verses 17 to 19, hear the word of the Lord. Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

For the scripture says you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain and the labor deserves his wages.

You're not admitted charge against an elder, except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. May the

Lord has blessings to the reading of his holy word. And there'll be some more reading of it. Just flip and push.

That's what Mike told me. I was trying to learn the flip turn in swimming.

One attempt, I just totally messed it up. I came out sideways. He looked at me and said, John, I don't know what you're doing wrong.

Just flip and push. Mike is one of the best swimmers in this area. Just a year younger than me and having swam all his life.

And to him, it's second nature. It's an instinct. Some people call it a muscle memory. Ever seen

Olympic swimmers are very good swimmers, swim meets and that kind of thing. Probably seen the way they turn around at the wall.

Some of it's sort of a wonder the way they do it. Come out to that wall and they just kind of flip under themselves.

Their feet come out of the water, land back in the water near the wall. And then they push off and they keep swimming. It's very efficient.

And it's just like a continual swim. Now, after swimming most of my life, we kind of on and off. And really, it's sort of a secondary exercise.

Briefly talk with Brent and Brian this morning. It's what they call runners called cross training. Some other kind of exercise to augment.

That was mine. I usually swam. But, you know, it was just a secondary thing. So I didn't worry about trying to be fast at it or good at it.

So I never learned to do the proper flip turn until just a couple of months ago. Before, before I would just try to turn around, you know, you swim and get to the wall, you reach out and then you just turn around and swim back the other way.

Now I wanted to learn the flip turns. This is going to be my main exercise. So I signed up for lessons at the Y to learn it.

Took lessons in learning the flip turn. I had one 16 year old boy given the task of teaching me the flip turn who looked at me kind of incredulous, like, well, just flip and push.

He didn't say that, but that's what he looked like. He was thinking to me. It's just, though, it's totally bewildering because you're spinning around upside down underwater and you're supposed to come out even and keep swimming.

I practice it over and over again as much as I could. I had to break it down to every single movement. You know, those who had done it all their lives couldn't tell you how do they do it because they just it just comes naturally to them now.

They forgot how they learned it. I had to break it down to every little movement. I watch YouTube videos on it and I practice it over and over again.

I once I got motion sick in the pool. I didn't throw up, but I felt like I was about to because I was spinning around, you know, upside down so many times.

It wasn't that it was hard to learn. It was that I already had a way to turn around that I had to unlearn.

My brain kind of had engraved on it the easy way to turn around. The muscle memory, one instructor called it what

I was used to. I still have a habit of sometimes coming out crooked because I'm doing my old way. A small child, if you got

Ali or Emery to try to if you taught them with with swimming and you taught them right away the flip turn, they would probably learn it in five minutes and think it's as easy.

And what's the big deal? You come naturally for me, not only for one point, I got where I thought I had learned it and I was doing it for two weeks and I suddenly unlearned it in the middle of a swim.

I just totally forgot how to do it. I came to the wall and didn't know what to do. I had to go back to the beginning and break it down to every movement and watch

YouTube videos again until about a week later. Again, I finally got to do it again. Now, imagine that not only was it something

I had never done, but I'd never even seen anyone do it. I always just done it the easy old wrong way.

And there was no mic to show me how to do it the right way. There were no lessons at the Y. There were no

YouTube videos. There's no Olympics or whoever on TV to watch. That's how they do it. It was only just mysterious instruction in a swimming manual.

Just flip and push. Do you think you. Would ever learn it that way?

Well, that's that's what it's like when there's something we've been doing, maybe all our lives.

Maybe all everyone around us has been doing it the same way, reinforcing us in it. And we think we know how to do it.

It seems to kind of work, but maybe it's all wrong.

Maybe like doing church. It seems to work, you know, in the pool, we get turned around, we swim the other way.

What's the big deal? But what if it's wrong? What if it's not just inefficient, like the old way to turn around, but it's actually destructive?

To the church, what if the reason it seems so many churches just seem to be getting something wrong, to be missing something?

Maybe not just inefficient, but missing something key to the church is because of an old way of doing things, old assumptions.

Muscle memory. Well, today, a special topical one off message, not just for the church generally, but the role of the pastor.

I'm 53 years old. That may not be old age yet, but I can see it from here. I can see the land of old age approaching one day.

That means one day. And it may be 40 years or it may be closer to four years.

That means I will have to be replaced as the pastor here. Right. The church will have to go through a process of of choosing a new pastor.

When that time comes, we need to know what to look for. Not only the qualifications of a pastor, but even more fundamental to that.

What does a pastor do? We might think we we might think we know just like I thought

I knew how to turn around while swimming, but I didn't. What does a pastor do?

Well, each of our three passages, three main passages tells us in their own way. Labor here in this

First Timothy, labor in preaching and teaching. Preach the word. Declare these things. I think we probably all know that that's not new, at least theoretically know that.

That means that there that means, though, you think about that. If that's the main task, preach the word.

Then the other things that sometimes other churches think pastors need to be consumed with, maybe with visiting people, counseling people, running programs or whatever it may be.

Those other things he may do. If they don't undermine his preaching and teaching. But the main thing is still laboring as in here in preaching and teaching.

That's why the only place in the Bible where the word pastor occurs as a title for someone in church is

Ephesians chapter four, verse 11. And there it is connected with the word teacher. Like if it were in English, it'd be like a hyphen pastor hyphen teacher.

Christ gave to the church pastor teachers. So those other things.

And that the church needs to do, maybe other elders can do them or maybe other members can do them.

If people see that someone needs visiting or there is a group of people who need some ministry or whatever, there's some need in the church.

And members can do it themselves. And sometimes maybe members should do it themselves often. A problem we have now,

I think it's part of the muscle memory of many churches is the instinct. Well, the pastor, he's the full time staff guy.

I mean, he's the professional. That's what we pay him for, you know. So he should be doing that stuff.

And we can come and kind of be passive and sit back. No, it's not what you pay him for.

Just kind of do all the stuff so you can be passive. You pay him for or in the words of Ephesians chapter four, verse 11, to equip who for the work of the ministry.

Do you know that phrase? To equip you, to equip the saints, equip you for the work of the ministry.

So when, for example, a couple of months ago, I think it was a couple of months ago, the young adults began a

Friday night group that they made a need that they thought they had. They they took it up initiative on their own and their own.

I thought that was excellent thing to do. But that's a great thing to do. That's the kind of thing our members should be doing here in First Timothy, chapter five or 17.

The men that we would call pastors, he called us. He just called them elders who labor in preaching and teaching kind of a cumbersome way to refer to them.

But that's that's the way he talks to them. And he begins, let the elders. Plural notices, plural who rule.

Notice that rule. Wednesday night, we went through every word, at least the key words here rule.

Well, rule or direct the church. So elders are leading the church. Those who rule well, but elders who rule well should be considered worthy of a double honor, more honor, apparently, than the other elders.

And then especially this is the main point here. Among those who rule well, another smaller group than the elders, because especially that that implies that not all the elders who really well are doing this, but some of them are are those who labor in preaching and teaching.

Now, notice that word, especially, especially another group actually a subgroup toil in the word of God.

And the word for work there means to toil, to work hard, strenuous labor that results in weariness and fatigue.

The kind of stuff you need a break from occasionally. This is not the kind of work one can do on the side as a hobby, merely after completing one secular employment for the day.

So the work then suggests is full time work. And then the next verse, verse 18 shows that they are paid.

You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, quoting the Old Testament. And the labor deserves his wages, quoting

Jesus. So so far, though, what you know, what's new? OK, we haven't described anything really new yet, have we?

What would you think? You may be thinking, OK, what's he saying? We're doing wrong. What's the muscle memory we need to unlearn? Well, notice now we go to and we'll be coming back to 1

Timothy chapter five. But now go to 2 Timothy, chapter four. And in 2

Timothy, chapter four, verses one and two. Notice should be only like two pages over.

Notice what Paul tells the pastor he's to do with the word. First, Timothy five, it's labor.

They labor in preaching and teaching. What in here in first and second Timothy, chapter four. What they what what does he do with the word that he is preaching and teaching?

And notice how different it is than you might in what you might expect. So if you can turn over, if you're not there yet.

Second, Timothy, chapter four, verses one and two. I'll read it, I guess. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who was to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing in his kingdom.

Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

Now, how different is that than what is often put out there as the job description of a pastor?

About a dozen years ago, I read probably hundreds, if not thousands of job descriptions, the job of pastor from churches that were looking for a pastor.

Hardly any of them look like they were describing what the New Testament describes as the role of the pastor.

When the time comes to replace me, what job description will you be writing?

Well, here, second Timothy, chapter four, verses one to two. Here's what Paul is writing to Timothy. Timothy is sort of the pastor there.

And Paul began second Timothy. You notice how how extremely serious he begins. Like what he's writing before and he pauses.

And this is serious. He's you know, this I call God the father himself and the

Lord Jesus Christ, the one who will judge, be the judge of all people. And implied in that is including you to Timothy to witness this.

Pay attention, Timothy. Pay attention. Covenant.

The pastor is charged. Proclaim the word. He's not charged with doing hours and hours of home visitation to visit or to visit the hospital every day or or to spend his time in counseling or socializing.

Now, some of that may be fine and useful. Some of it is sometimes unnecessary, but he's called most of all to proclaim the word.

That's not too surprising either. Yet, I don't think you knew that. I think I'm pretty sure all here knew that most other churches would even say they want someone to preach the sermons.

Fine. But be ready to do it, he says, in season and out of season, literally in good times and in bad times.

Do it when the church is growing and people are excited and everything is new. And even

Wednesday nights are overflowing and and in bad times when people are distracted and down and the church seems to be dwindling.

Maybe we get that, too. OK, we know you're mature enough. You know, you need some endurance. There's going to be some down times.

You're going to hit some bumps, but keep going even when it's hard. And now, though, here's where it gets a little strange.

To most to us, to most of us, I think the most American people, here's where it begins to sound like just saying, just imagine, just say, well, just flip and push to someone who's never even seen a flip turn in his life.

Preach the word. OK, we get that. But what is he doing with the word? Is it a theological lecture?

Is he telling us about all the verb tenses and participles and conditional clauses so we can go away with an excellent understanding of the grammar of this verse?

And next week, we'll hear about we'll hear the grammar of the the next verse is taken apart word by word.

Well, maybe that's how it starts, because you do need to understand the word before it can be applied. But that's not all.

Notice second notice next second Timothy, chapter four, verse two, three things reprove, rebuke and exhort.

Now, to reprove means to correct. So there's a problem and it is to be corrected.

Timothy, you are to correct it with the word, not just with your own opinions, your own attitudes, just because you don't like things.

You don't like people coming to church with a, you know, UNC shirt on because you don't like them. So you're going to know, you know, you don't correct according your own taste.

You correct according to the word. But you're taking the word and you are correcting. You're saying, you know, if it's swimming, don't turn around like that.

That's inefficient. Do it this way. Don't try to serve God in money. You can't do both.

Don't have sex outside of marriage. Implied now in that is that it is his people who are being reproved, who are being corrected.

Right. You understand that. I hope. Who are you approving, Timothy? You think he's saying me? He doesn't mean reprove those pagans over there in their temple, you know, who aren't even there to listen to you.

No, he means reprove the people in his church, not the pagan people in Rome, not the uncouth barbarians, not the liberals in Hollywood, not the

Mormons in Utah. Correct, reprove the people in front of you, the people in the church make the word relevant to their lives and then rebuke, rebuke you.

To rebuke is a sharper form of correction. So it's, you know, it's sterner. Stop turning like that.

It's inefficient. You need to learn how to do it right. Maybe not that tone kind of puts people off, but repent of making an idol out of wealth.

Repent of your fornication, of watching pornography, of stoking loss. Repent of enabling sin, of going along with it.

Stop it. Then exhort. Now, we get that one, and I don't mean to put it down.

It's positive. It's more positive and encouraging. It's it's to come alongside someone to help them to do it the right way.

And it's probably the one of the major three things that a pastor should do with this preaching, the word that we do understand and that we

I think we do. It's like swimming. Let me show you how to do the flip turn better.

Seek first the kingdom of God. I think this is what Jesus was doing when he said that, right? He was exhorting. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

And all the things that you need will be added to you. I kind of inspirational aspire to a life of purity.

Positive, right? Again, all these things for prove, rebuke, exhort are taking the word and applying it to the people in the church.

Now, why would a pastor do that? Right, if it's just an educational institution, you just want to know that extra

Jesus. So this is a present indicative participle. You know, you learn stuff like that. That's all it was.

No, but that's not all the church is. Because remember what the church is in First Timothy? We looked at this last summer.

First Timothy, the church was a gymnasium of godliness. It's great.

We have Jim written on our building. We're a gymnasium, hopefully, of godliness. So where do you go to be trained to be like God in your character?

So more and more, you you're like him. You train athletically. You can grow.

And if you train spiritually, that's what you're here for. And when I was running track, one workout, the coach told us to run some distance, whatever it was.

And I take off. And I'm thinking the best way to start is by over striding.

Otherwise, you stretching the stride about as far as it can be stretched. I think, you know, striduous. That's the way in my mind.

That was the best way to start. And the coach stopped us, called us together, gave a brief little lesson, reproving mostly me, but all of us on not over striding.

It's not a good way to start. He said. And he was right. He was talking specifically about me.

But he thought, well, he was correcting me. He might as well correct the whole team. I was glad for the instruction because I wanted to be a better runner.

You should be glad for correction here because you want to be a better Christian. Oh. So if you feel like someday you come in here and you think, man, he's talking directly to me, reproving, hopefully not rebuking, but maybe.

Or exhorting, you think like I'm talking directly to you. My response is.

You're welcome. Now, the pastors to do these three things with complete patience and he says teaching to anybody means like with doctrine, show the doctrinal reason why this is so.

The patience now is not only the tone, because if someone says you must stop watching that filth on TV, you're filling your mind with with all that smutting, you gluttonous, fat, literous pig, you.

Someone says that to you, you probably, you know, all you hear is the the anger and the frustration and the insults.

You don't get anything from that. So you need to be patient and in tone. Joe is good at patience and tone, but also patience in that you keep doing it.

Teach patiently means you keep keep doing the teaching. And it literally means with long suffering.

Sometimes you have to suffer through other people's failures to understand their failure to grow, their failure to change right away.

But you continue teaching so you don't give up. You think, oh, the teaching these people for 10 years and it hasn't made a difference.

I quit. I'm going to do something else. You teach them with teaching of a patient and with teaching, with with doctrine.

You know, the covetousness is idolatry. The kingdom of God is the great treasure.

And so that means that if you have to close your shop, it's not that we want you to make less money. We don't we want you to be prosperous.

But the fact is that if you have to close your shop on Sunday mornings and so you are making less money, that's a sacrifice you have to make.

This is just it is. Because the kingdom of God is the great treasures, the pearl of great price. The husband is the head of the wife, like Christ is the head of the church, as in the first Corinthians chapter 11.

And so to give up that headship in the home. Just to have peace.

That's just like a church giving up the headship of Christ in the church. Well, we're not going to follow

Christ anymore. We're going to follow because, you know, these people, because they're making a lot of trouble. We're going to go along with them.

It's the same thing. Show them, show people that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit's inside you, so you can't engage it in immorality, showing the theology, the doctrine that produces the reproving, rebuking, the exhortation.

So the passive reproves, corrects, rebukes, corrects sharply sometimes and exhorts, encourages, inspires you hopefully to do better, to have a vision of the great truths that fill you with hope and that propel you to do better, that puts wind in your sails.

And you do each of these three things patiently, consistently. Now, think about, though, in our culture, where the kids are constantly raised on being told how great they are.

You know, you're the best. You're the best at math. And you can hardly add are where Christian radio stations sell themselves and be exclusively positive and encouraging.

You know, just the exhorting, not the reproving and rebuking. That's our culture.

You got our culture here like that, and then you have this. What do you think the chances are that some people are going to be offended by a pastor who doesn't just exhort, not just positive and encouraging, but also reproves and rebukes, who doctrinally shows you what you're doing wrong?

You think there'll be some offense, offense there? Well, there's another passage we need to turn to where Paul tells the pastor what to do.

It should be just one page over. Titus chapter two, verse 15. Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority.

Let no one disregard you. So first declare these things. And that means that the things that he's just written in that chapter, these are the things that he's struck, the various groups of people that he talked about, talked about older men, older women, younger women and younger men, the older women, by the way.

Can teach the younger women. So you have one members teaching some members, teaching other members.

And so we see that some of the ministry can be delegated. The pastor doesn't have to do it all, but he has to declare these things.

You just speak these things and exhort. And we've seen that already. And. What's that word again?

Rebuke. Or reprove again to Timothy, it was reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.

Here it is. Speak, exhort and correct with all authority.

Literally. He says by command. In other words, speak it all the instructions above to those people encouraging, sure, but also correcting with a command, not a suggestion with authority because you,

Titus, pastor, have authority. And here's the kicker. What, in my opinion, at least maybe it's because of my position.

But in my opinion, it's the most interesting command in all of scripture. When you think about how you obey it to the pastor, let no one disregard you.

Think about that for a moment. You think about that as a command to a pastor. Let no one disregard you.

How do you obey that? I mean, how do you let no one disregard you?

Don't allow it. That is, you don't allow yourself, Titus, pastor, to be disregarded, to be looked down on, to be considered a punching bag, who could be blamed for anything, who has to do what we say, because that's what we pay him for.

What a strange command. Do not tolerate being disregarded.

Your word ignored, treated disrespectfully. Of all the hundreds or thousands of pastor job descriptions

I saw, I never saw one that read anything like, now come here, correct us, rebuke us, exhort us with all authority and don't take any attitude from us.

I never saw anything like that. That's what he's saying here. You will see a lot of those of pastor job descriptions, though, they mention a servant leader, which sounds really spiritual.

And it is, if it's rightly understood. But I think it's usually code for you'll do what we say and you'll say what we want and say it in the way we want because we pay you.

I think that's what they usually mean. Jesus was a servant leader. He nailed and washed the disciples feet.

He's the good shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep. Peter calls him in first Peter, chapter two, verse twenty five, the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

Using the word shepherd, that also means pastor. The word shepherd and pastor are the same in Greek.

So Jesus is the pastor and the overseer of our souls.

So if he's then the pastor, you think about Titus two, 15 year. Did he let people disregard him or did he let his people disregard him?

Think of that. I mean, you have the people outside we've seen in the past few weeks. He certainly was despised by the world.

He was disregarded, badly treated. But what about his people, the people he chose, the people in the church?

You should understand there's a difference. Did he let them disregard him? When Peter disregarded his prediction for the cross,

Jesus called him Satan. He reproved his disciples for being of little faith, for not understanding that he can supply all their needs.

When James and John wanted to call fire down from heaven and consume that Samaritan village, they won't accept you,

Jesus. Jesus, it says the Bible says he turned on the way.

He looked right at them and rebuked them. He taught with all authority, the commanding presence.

So this idea that servant leadership, which Jesus is the model of, that means that the pastor or the father in the home for that matter is simply supposed to take all the abuse from the church, from you people, to accept being disregarded, insulted, suspected, accused, and just automatically assume that he's done something wrong because something has gone wrong.

Someone is upset. Someone has left. Someone is protesting. Well, it must be the pastor's fault that he's the punching bag and he has to take it because that's what servant leaders do.

Take it not from the world. You have to take some abuse from them, but from the church itself. That idea, which is the idea many people have of servant leadership, that idea is wrong.

You see that here in Titus 215. It's the muscle memory the world has taught us through constant reinforcement, that the reflex that the pastor is the one person in the church that you can sometimes for no apparent reason disregard, suspect, accuse.

There's four major reasons besides Titus 215, that the reflex that so many of us have adopted from the world, that that reflex is wrong.

First is nonsensical. Second is unbiblical. Third is divisive.

Finally, it is discouraging. First, even though we Americans are taught it, somehow it's put in our baby milk,

I guess. It's nonsensical to have an attitude that if something's gone wrong, it must be the leader's fault.

No, FDR wasn't responsible for Pearl Harbor. Bush wasn't in on 9 -11. It's even more nonsensical when you bring that attitude into the church, especially a church like us.

Now, think about it. Why would the pastor of all people do something that would purposefully drive people away from the church?

Unless, of course, he determines that's necessary for the greater health and peace of the church. Think about it.

You do understand, I hope, that I'm the one person here whose pay depends on the church being alive.

You understand that? That fact, surely you understand, if you think about it, has a way of focusing my attention on how we can keep people and hopefully grow.

Now, maybe you think, well, you're sure not doing a very good job, but OK, maybe you're right. But I hope you understand that I have an economic incentive to keep people, if at all possible.

You understand how nonsensical it is to blame the pastor of all people for for people leaving, unless you can point to specific sinful behavior on his part that made that happen?

Do you understand that the pastor of all people is is is the one who most wants people not to be upset and leave?

Because it is always a, at least all the cases I know of, it's always a personal rejection of him.

Here, I mean. You understand that? No, no one here that I know of has said, boy,

I sure love John and his preaching, but I just can't stand the way pick somebody here. Just I can't stand them the way they sit in the congregation and listen.

So I'm leaving. It didn't work that way. So it's what sense does it make them just instinctively blame the pastor?

Second, it's unbiblical. The reflex to blame the pastor when something has gone wrong is unbiblical. Look back at First Timothy.

We'll go back to where we started. First Timothy, chapter five, verse 19, where it says, do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

Do not admit means do not receive it, don't entertain it. In other words, to give it no weight, don't consider it.

Certainly don't just jump to the conclusion that, you know. Wow, it's true.

And we've got to do something. We got to do it now. No, don't accept an accusation against an elder.

And the pastor is an elder. Unless there are two or three witnesses to corroborate it. Of course, modern Americans don't even think they need one.

They just jump to the conclusion with no evidence. Don't do that. The muscle memory of our culture says we can say anything we want against the leaders and you can't do anything to stop us.

That's what the culture says. The Bible says, no, you can't do that.

The third, it's divisive, it's divisive because one, some people aren't going to reflexively go along with it.

When we moved to northern Illinois, to Chicago suburbs for me to start my Ph .D. studies, we attended a church there for several months and we just Mary and I, she baby,

Micah was a baby then. Everything seemed fine. The pastor was a good preacher. I didn't know him personally, didn't interact with him personally.

We finally joined a small group that met in this man's house. I was in it. It was in the church. Anyway, suddenly one

Sunday evening for the small group, the host dedicated the entire small group session to laying out a case, which he said was no holds barred.

This is everything as to why they should fire the pastor. And I just listened intently.

I didn't say a word. I wanted to know why they wanted to fire him. It was all disagreements about management.

And maybe he made mistakes in management or whatever, dealing with people. But no sins were proven. And as we were saying goodbye at the front door, it's northern

Illinois. It's in January. It's cold out. Snow all over the ground. But they're northerners.

They know how to shovel it off the pass. Nicely shoveled. And we say goodbye with a smile. Door closes behind us.

And Mary's holding little baby Micah. And the first thing I do is I turn to her and say, whatever you do, do not ever let me become a pastor.

That was ridiculous. The next Sunday, when they met at a meeting to fire the pastor, which they did, that was our last

Sunday in that church. They lost a lot of people, not just us. They lost a lot of people because some

Christians aren't going to put up with that kind of behavior. It's also divisive in a cross -cultural church like ours.

Cultural issues make a big difference here. People from other cultures haven't learned the same reflex.

They haven't developed the same muscle memory. And here is where it's going to start to hurt some of you white

American people. It's not an issue of race, but it's an issue of culture. You know, we have two neighboring churches.

So here's a great, great science. They would call it a double blind study, I guess. We have two neighboring churches here in Providence.

One's white, one's black. Now, I'm pretty sure by now the white church would accept black people and the black church would accept white people.

But that's the way they've been historically, culturally. And I saw a list in the white church of all the pastors that they've had.

Now, I didn't do them. I didn't do the math. But I guess that each pastor there lasts about three to five years on average.

You know, when you have the attitude to blame the pastor first, after a while, the grievances, real or imagined, start to pile up.

And he has to go. You start over with a new guy and you think, oh, he's going to be great. And then the same process starts again. I also saw a list of the pastors in the black church here in Providence, the pastors they've had, and I did do the math.

The pastors there averaged 25 years. Big difference within our within our church.

We have different cultures. So if the cultures perceive and act differently, it could be divisive.

One of the great benefits, I think, to a cross -cultural church should be that people from different cultures, they come from different worlds.

They've been shaped differently. The world that squeezed us into its mold. We've all been affected by the world.

We need to understand that the world that squeezed us into its mold is different than the world that squeezed them into its mold.

And so they can challenge us and we can maybe challenge them. They can challenge our basic assumptions, our reflex reactions.

Why we just kind of automatically jump to the conclusions we do. Maybe they don't automatically jump to them. Why is that?

And you go to the Bible to decide which one is right. Sometimes this is neither here nor there. But, you know, whether you eat with chopsticks or with a fork, you know, whatever you like, it's not wrong either way.

But some things are right or wrong. Maybe we're the worldly ones. And we're worldly in ways that we wouldn't have seen if we were just always surrounded by people like us.

Of course, that depends on listening to them. Which means we have to talk to one another.

And that can be hard sometimes if, you know, they don't speak English. Now, I'm blessed to have a translator.

That's great. I have a translator. So I get to hear all sides. A while back when some people left us, one of our

Chinese members said. And this is going to hurt. That's the way they are.

The they is the white people. The that. Is unfaithful.

That's the way they are. Now, I'm sure this member would admit there are a lot of exceptions.

And we charitably believe that all of you are among those exceptions, exceptions. But generally, they don't keep their commitments.

They talk loudly and emotionally about how they love. But then they disappear over the slightest little offenses.

And that's not the first time I heard that. When I first lived in Singapore in 1990, the prime minister there,

Lee Kuan Yew, gave a three hour speech giving advice on all kinds of things. It was an amazing speech.

And I was there chasing a Singaporean girl. And he even gave advice in his three hour speech to the local girls about whether or not to marry white men.

And he said to the local girls, you should keep your maiden name because although the white men might marry you quickly, they will also divorce you quickly.

Ouch. So you thought everything, everybody was like this, taking commitments lightly, asking people to be faithful to their covenants.

That's too controlling, almost cultic, while reflexively blaming the leader, maybe in church, the pastor. Everyone does that.

That's normal. No, it's not. It's what you were taught.

By your culture. Another painful example. About three years ago, we had a couple here who became openly disruptive to the point of even publicly denouncing a video

I showed. The man stood up and denounced a video I showed in Sunday school. Now that's despising. Remember Titus 215? That's disregarding not only the video, but the one who showed it, which is me.

No, I didn't. I didn't scream at him, by the way. I did some back and forth emailing during the week, trying to patiently and fully answer questions, exhorting, reproving.

I did say through email, you know, you can't really have people standing up in Sunday school and denouncing our videos.

Not rebuking yet. The next week at gym, I overheard him talking to Joe for about an hour.

And I thought, first, I thought, one, better Joe than me, because Joe's more patient with that kind of thing.

And second, I thought, the guy's talking about the same things I've emailed him about.

He disregarded what I told him. And these are then aren't honest questions that he's seeking answers to.

This is badgering. And then when he was done with Joe, he started talking to me right there at that front table.

And on and on and on he went. Many of the same things that I answer already, and that Joe had patiently listened to him about.

And finally, when he made a false accusation, some false statement, I had had enough. This constant agitation could not go on anymore.

So I stood up, and I pointed at him. And moving from reproof and teaching to rebuke, and I said, stop it.

About like that to him. And then I walked to the kitchen, right over there. Now, I almost guarantee you that had the gym here been full of white people, most of them would have immediately thought, like a reflex,

John has done something wrong. We need to rebuke him. There's a conflict. He's the pastor.

The pastor is always wrong. He certainly shouldn't be involved in any conflicts. But it wasn't full of white people.

It was full of black people. And as I was pacing back and forth in the kitchen there, cooling down, texting

Joe, asking him to come up here, take care of this, and considering what to do next, one of the gym guys stuck his head in the kitchen and said,

John, you all right? You know we've got your back. Oh, I could not have heard nicer words.

The painful part comes if you compare that, maybe I shouldn't say, to maybe how you might react.

I came up with a joke when someone informed my wife that the lady's restroom was a mess. In the

Chinese church, this is true, in the Chinese church, they call the pastor's wife Mrs. Pastor. In the black church, they call her

First Lady. In the white church, they call her to tell her the bathroom is dirty. You see, there is a cultural difference.

And that can be divisive if you don't change for the better.

Finally, what should be most obvious, this reflex to blame the pastor is discouraging. Now, if something has gone wrong in the church, the pastor feels it the most.

So unless you absolutely have to, you have two or three witnesses, it's a matter of sin. Unless that, it's probably not a good time for your muscle memory to kick in and you start blaming him.

Now, he may be imperfect, my case certainly is. But you may think, oh, but you don't know how

I feel, how hurt I am that this has happened. It's kind of like the boy with the stumped toe asking the amputee who had stepped on a landmine, you know how much this hurts?

Yeah, I think I do. It's God's design that churches have pastors.

Pastors are imperfect men, especially in this case here, sinners like anyone else.

But it is through them, and sure, through all the other members of the church, but particularly through the pastors, that the pastor and overseer of our souls, the

Lord Jesus, oversees us and he shepherds us. Jesus's servant leadership wasn't in being disregarded and blamed by his disciples doing, you know, our beck and call.

He did for us what we needed. As Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2, Christ suffered for us.

He suffered all the beatings, and the betrayals, and the lashings, and the thorns in the scalp, all the rejection, and the scorn, the mockery, the disregard, the despising from the world that we looked at over the last few weeks.

He suffered all of that from the world to buy the church so that the church would be different from the world.

He gave us an example because we might have to follow him into suffering. So we shouldn't be surprised when we're reviled, disregarded, despised by the world, when some people betray us, when they won't go any more steps into discipleship with us.

We shouldn't be surprised when his word brings the same response he got. He did it to be an example for us because we might have to bear some of the same treatment, but he also did it to do for us what we cannot follow him into, to purchase our salvation.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

That's how he was our servant, our suffering servant.

And by that, he found us straying sheep and became the perfect pastor of our souls.

You're the formerly straying sheep and he's the shepherd, the pastor.