A Pastoral Exhortation
“Love to neighbor” was the
starting point for the Puritans in all human relationships.
In domestic relations, the ideal was expressed like this, “One’s
spouse was to be the “nearest and dearest neighbor.” William Gouge used the image
of the husband being the head and the woman the heart. Both organs working well
are indispensable for a healthy life. The woman completed the man as an
important partner in life. He was incomplete on his own.
“Love to neighbor” was the starting point for relationships in the
church as well. Have you ever thought of your fellow-members, long-time
visitors, occasional visitors, and as Paul calls them in 1 Cor 12:23,
unpresentable parts, are due your love simply because they are your neighbors?
And, we know from the parable of the good Samaritan that our neighbor is anyone
with whom we come in contact. So, this evening, though worshiping, we are a
bunch of neighbors.
Sometimes we are called and commanded to love a certain category
of neighbor. I want to explore one of those this evening in our exposition. So
turn to 1 Thess 5, where we will read verses 12 & 13..
As you are turning, How many of you are elders and pastors, please
raise your hands quickly? I’ve called this message “A Pastoral Exhortation.”
However, it is not directed to the pastors, it is directed to everyone who did
not raise their hands--to those who are under their care. The subtitle is,
“Love your Pastor as one of your dearest neighbors.”
The Text:
1. Recognize Them
1 Th. 5:12 And we urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labor among you,
and are over you in the Lord and admonish you,
2. Esteem Them
13 and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake.
3. Be at Peace with Them
Be at peace among yourselves.
Let’s open up the text and apply these things as we move through
them.
1. Recognize Them
1 Th. 5:12 And we urge you,
The Apostle Paul could have given a hard and fast command
according to his apostolic authority to the Church. Instead he gently, but
firmly, entreats them to consider something important, that is something they
need to do. It is not optional for them. It is necessary. But, the way it is
put before their eyes is a tender exhortation, asking them to consider what
follows as important, and for their good.
Paul often does this. It shows he understood how to deal with
people. It is often better to ask graciously, rather than demand obedience with
a strong command. In this, Paul is being very pastoral as he writes further....
brethren,
What do we have here in this one word? We find the wonderful
language used to show the Churches of God are a fraternity of like-minded
believers. They are all brothers. Even the sisters are included in the generic
use of the words.
Paul is asking and urging some who have a specific relationship
together. Elsewhere, the Church is called the house and household of God.
1Tim. 3:15 ....but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you
ought to conduct yourself in the house
of God, which is the church of the
living God, the pillar and ground of
the truth.
Eph. 2:19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but
fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God....
While mixing his metaphors, the Apostle conveys this important idea--the
Church is analogous to a household that belongs to God. He owns it. He bought
it with the blood of his own dear Son. Ultimately he is the head. But, over
this household he places men to rule in his place and by his directions. These
men have a position that is spiritually like a father over a household.
This is where someone thinks, Doesn’t the Bible say, Matt. 23:9 “Do not call anyone on earth
your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. The context of those
words is Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees for using the Rabbis as the
source of their traditions that had eclipsed their use of God’s Word. Their
source of doctrine, practice and life ought to have been from God the Father.
It was not.
Within the Household of God, their is the use of the idea of father implied in the use of a phrase like
“true son.” Paul saw himself as having this fatherly relationship towards two
men who had been sent out as evangelists with apostolic authority. Listen to
the use of familial language again:
1Tim. 1:2 To Timothy, a true son
in the faith:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our
Lord.
Titus 1:4 To Titus, a true son in
our common faith:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ our Savior.
When writing to the Thessalonians, Paul reminded them of the
ministry that he and his apostolic band had among them:
1Th. 2:11 as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one
of you, as a father does his own
children....
Therefore, the use of the word “brethren” ought to remind us that
we are all in this together as the household of God. We are family! Actually,
when Jesus’ own family came looking for him on one of his busiest days, they
sent word for Jesus to go to them. He did not. The narrative is found in Matt
12:
Matt. 12:46 While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother
and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak with Him. 47
Then one said to Him, “Look, Your mother
and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You.”
The Question:
48 But He answered and said to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?”
The Answer:
49 And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers!
The Explanation
50 “For whoever does the will
of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”
Jesus family values are directed to his valued family--those who
live by faith are his family members. Jesus is not afraid to call the likes of
us, his brethren (Heb. 2:11).
There is another important argument linking the activities of
human fathers to those of spiritual fathers. Paul asks the practical question
amid the qualifications for office in 1 Tim 3:5 (for if a man does not
know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of
God?)....
Just as families have heads over them to guide them along, so too,
churches need good and godly men to be over others in the Lord. Every
Bible-believing Church needs faithful elders to pastor them. In 2 Thess 5, Paul
gets specific about what he is asking the household of God, the Church to
do:
to recognize those who labor
among you,
and are over you in the Lord
and admonish you,
There are two things all of you who are under the authority of
elders need to know:
1. The work of the ministry is labor
2. It is given to those who are over you, to admonish you.
Let’s park here for a few minutes:
1. The work of the ministry is labor
This is where I can say things and get away with them because they
sill not sound self-serving to anyone. I am 3,000 miles away from those who are
under my care. I am here exhorting you to recognize and love your pastors.
Some people think the ministry would be a great vocation because
pastors only work one day, Sunday.
I’ll let you in on a secret, we work half days, really. We just
don’t know which twelve hours it is going to be.
Sometimes the ministry is very difficult work, indeed. The average
church member doesn’t have a good understanding of the complexities of the
pastoral office.
All we do can be reduced to two areas of ministry:
We speak to men on behalf of God
and, we speak to God on behalf of men.
We preach, exhort, council, and in an age of technology, talk over
the telephone, answer email, and I have no idea what’s coming down the
technological pipeline and how it will affect the ministry. Much of that work
is done as a labor of love, in a private place we call Pastor’s Study. It is
called a “Study” because that is the main activity done in that space.
Have you ever considered the time it takes to put together a
message? It takes many hours of reading, meditating, praying, writing, editing,
rewriting, thinking of ways to illustrate and apply the truths found in the
text. It takes a lot of work to get things right. We don’t have infallible
gifts to teach extemporaneously whenever we enter the pulpit. What is said is a
carefully studied exposition of God’s Word or some topic found therein or a
mixture of both of those methodologies. As men who prepare to speak for God
each Lord’s Day, we must be careful to find the truth and then broadcast it to
you. That takes time.
You can love your pastor by giving him the time he needs to
prepare for the good of your souls. You can love your neighbors in the pews by
doing the same thing. Give your pastors time to prepare.
But, there is more. We speak to men on behalf of God, but we also
speak to God on behalf of men. Pastors are utterly dependant on God to work his
grace in his people. Churches can be very frail organisms that get crushed or
kicked around very easily. Our main spiritual weapon for the good of your soul
and the peace and prosperity for the churches is to pray. Prayer takes time and
the more people there are for whom we need to pray, the more time it takes.
There is something you need to know: when pastors pray privately
for you, they do not pray as they do in public. Prayers become something less
generic and more pointed. Sometimes it is a delight to pray for the saints.
Sometimes it is agony before the throne of grace. Sometimes it is all we can
do--pray for God to act in grace with mercy.
When a pastor intercedes for you, his study can be the loneliest
place on the planet. But, he does it for you as a labor of love. Prayer does
not come naturally to all believers. Many of you know what a constant struggle
it is to find time to pray. So too, your pastor. The danger is to pray for the
congregation with repetitive generic prayers. What they need is pointed
requests for the good of their souls, not necessarily the health of their
bodies. God teaches profound truths in the furnace of affliction. God knows the
most efficient means to do his work. So, we pray for him to do all his holy
will. There have been times I have had
to pray for God to crush a stone-cold and hardened heart, in order to manifest
his glory.
So, prayer takes time. Prayer takes privacy. Love your pastor who
prays for you because he loves your soul, by praying for him, and giving him
the time and space needed to labor for you.
Recognize that your pastors labor for you. It is a labor of love
towards God and his people, but it can be exhausting at times. Many men burn
out before their time because of the burdens of others.
There are many things that are handled by a pastor, or the elders
as a board, that you never hear about. We tend to be quick to rejoice over the
good and glorious, but most issues that are brought to an elder are difficult
personal matters. Many of you likely fit into this category.
The telephone rings and someone wants to talk to the pastor. An
appointment is made, the pastor often has no idea what is going to be said
until the hour comes. You could help your pastor greatly if you gave him the
basics. As a man who is not omniscient, a little preparation and prayer on his
part can go a long way towards giving you wise counsel.
The second doctrine from Verse 12 is
2. It is given to those who are over you, to admonish you.
The very language used in the Bible as regards Church leadership
is that there is a class of men who are over others. In an egalitarian age,
some don’t like this idea. When you add in American democratic ideals taken
from the Enlightenment, people think they have a right to their opinion.
Anything else is un-American.
In case nobody has ever told you before, that mindset is wrong and
antithetical to God’s self-disclosure of His Will. Ultimately, we don’t have a
right to our opinions, we will be judged by the standards that reveal God’s
opinions. We have a need to submit to him in all things where he has revealed
his will.
In the Church, not every one has a right to his or her opinion.
There are men given by God as gifts to the churches to rule over them. The
Cambridge Platform in one place calls the elders an aristocracy.
Do you see your pastors as a gift given to you because of the love
Jesus has for his Church? I’m not talking about the sort of man who acts like
he is God’ gift to everyone, but those who truly are the endowments of a loving
Lord to care for his bride by serving him.
Eph. 4:8 Therefore He says: “When
He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men.” [leaving
out the parenthetical statement in Vss 9 & 10, skip down to Vs 11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists,
and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for
the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13
till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and
carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the
cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting....
So that what we read in Verse 14 does not come to pass, we need
faithful men to lead us to what we find in 12 & 13. The only abiding office
in the Church is this pastor/teacher office. Christians ought to be settled in
under a faithful ministry that watches over their souls that equip the saints,
does the work of ministry and edifies the church. That’s what everyone should
be after...
It is those who are over you in he Lord who have been given the
task of admonishing you. One of the lexicons defines the verb from which
admonish comes in this way: to provide
instruction as to correct behavior and belief.
It is when you don’t agree or like what the pastor or pastors have
to say that admonishing becomes a problem, right? When you agree, or when it is
about someone else being corrected, it is much easier to hear. You now how it
goes--you say to yourself, “I hope Mr. So-and-so is listening. He needs to hear
that. Amen, its about time.” None of you would ever think like that, would
you?.
It is when the preaching or the preacher hits close to home and
touches on our pet sins and idols, that we have the most trouble being
corrected. But, it is on those issues that we need to have a tender conscience
and see that God has been faithful to us. That the word of God preached is the
Word of God that has been accompanied by the work of the Spirit of God to
provoke us to repentance, that we might live by faith and profit from the
public means of grace. That the edification we found in Eph 4:12 will actually
happen.
As the Apostle John wrote to the household of God over which he
had been sovereignly placed, “3John 1:4
I have no greater joy than to hear
that my children walk in truth.
And, as the writer of Hebrews put it:
Heb. 13:17 Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and
not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.
“Brethren, recognize those who labor among you, and are over you
in the Lord and admonish you....”
Now we can move on to point two:
2. Esteem Them
13 and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake.
A. to esteem them
The original gives the sense of involving oneself in the action of
having an opinion of someone--those who rule. Then, Paul goes on to tell the
believers what kind of opinion they are to have of their pastors...he adds....
very highly.
You should have a very high opinion of your elders, that means a
favorable belief about them.
Recently, I was asked to consult with an elder at another church
about 30 minutes from us. In the exercise of his pastoral duties, he asked a
man why they were leaving the church. The man reluctantly and eventually told
the inquiring elder. The man also gave him two pieces of correspondence to back
up what he had said. Being between the proverbial rock and a hard place, the
man sought counsel outside of their eldership because part of the problem
related to at least one of the elders. This inquiring elder wanted to do what
was right by a biblical standard. When he did, he met with belligerence and an
unwillingness to let the issue move forward. Some in leadership, did not want
to embarrass a certain elder by making this public.
The elder who wanted to do what was right became the enemy for
being divisive--remember, this was uncovered in his faithfulness to Christ and
the Church over which the Holy Spirit had made him an elder. He contacted me again amid the crisis. He was
trying to give the benefit of the doubt, but the doubt was diminishing. He
asked, Mike, what do I do. I told him this, “If you still see those men as
faithful shepherds, hang in there and teach them from the scriptures why this
situation is wrong. If you don’t see them as faithful shepherds, for the sake
of your own soul and the souls of your family, get out of there.” The light
turned on, he resigned his membership and the eldership. He realized that he
could not in good conscience do what this verse asked him to do.
Brethren, give your elders the benefit of the doubt. That is what
esteeming them highly means in part. Assume they know more about a situation
than you do. Intentionally recall their wise ways in the past and pray that God
would continue to give them wisdom.
The rest of it means, as one of the lexicons puts it, esteem them
to an extraordinary degree, involving a considerable excess over what would be
expected. But, don’t put them on an untouchable pedestal--they are ordinary men
with an extraordinary calling.
But, it is not just that you should esteem them very highly...Paul
adds words upon words to make an important point.
B. in love--have a very high opinion of them in Christian
love. We are where we began...love your
elders as your neighbors and love your neighbors as yourself. We already love
ourselves too much. So this love is self-sacrificing in attitude and action
toward those who God has given to you.
You can’t love your pastors too much, if you love them the right
way.
Willingly submit to their biblical authority exercised in
legitimate bounds. When they admonish you with the commands of scripture, do
what they have taught you. When they tell you what God forbids, stay away from
the dangers. When they warn you take heed. Let yourselves be convinced by them.
Do you know what they best compliment a pastor can receive? It is
to see his children are walking in the truth. You have listened, been built up,
followed-through and have been changed by the power of God in the gospel.
Some of you are under faithful men who over the years have given
you more than the typical evangelical seminary education. Brethren, that is phenomenal. It should be
valued highly. But, that’s what pastors do. It is their labor of love. Esteem
them very highly, as it says...
C. for their work’s sake.
Turn their griefs into profound joys. Heb. 13:17 Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for
they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so
with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.
It is those who rule who must exercise the greatest caution, the
most patience and a gentle hand. To give grief to the watchman is not good for
your own souls. It brings you no profit. Love your pastors, make life joyful
for them whenever you can.
When these things are in place, a wonderful disposition of
corporate contentment can be found.
3. Be at Peace with Them
Be at peace among yourselves.
Be at peace with those who rule over you. This is a full force
command appended to the more gentle words. Be at peace! Be at peace with one another under their
rule. Be at peace with them when they admonish you publicly or privately, even
when you think they are reading your mind.
What a wonderful way to end an exhortation about those who rule
over others. There are a lot of problems that can arise and some of them rather
quickly. When disruption comes, the peace is lost.
When I first entered the ministry, a friend told me something I
have never forgotten as he gave me a book called Habitation of Dragons. He said cynically, “The ministry would be
the best job in the world, if not for the people.” The book was all about
problems found in the typical church. I’ve seen it all! I have the effects of
some terrible things in my body. But you know what? “When people learn, when
they come to faith, when they understand, when they make progress, when they
see how it all is supposed to fit together, it is wonderful to be among the
elders who shepherd the souls of men.
We have a world-class scientist who attends our church. He is a
brilliant man. It would not surprise me to hear he has been nominated for a
Nobel Prize someday. He was snowed in one Sunday. He spent the day reading
theology and studying the scriptures. He came to me the next week to tell me
what a wonderful time of study he had last week. I smiled, and said, “Mark, I
get to do that every day.”
So, with the words of our text, I urge you, brethren, to recognize
those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, 13 and to esteem them very highly in
love for their work’s sake. Be at peace among yourselves.
When all is said and done, the Christian Ministry is one of the
highest callings to which anybody can be summoned. Love you pastors. Recognize
their private labors for the good of all your souls. Have high opinions of
them--as gifts from God for you. Listen to them and be admonished. Remain at peace. Amen!
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