OUTLINE:
The Pastor Is God’s Representative, Right? There are a lot of Biblical references where God is displeased with pastors.
- Jeremiah 3:15; Jeremiah 23:1-4; Ezekiel 34:1-31; Matthew 23:1-39.
What A Good Shepherd Looks Like:
1. The focus is on the sheep, not the pastor.
- Ezekiel 34:2-3; John 10:11-15.
2. They do their best to find lost sheep.
- Jeremiah 23:4; Luke 15:1-7.
3. They stay diligent to keep sheep from getting separated from the flock.
- Jeremiah 23:2, 3; Ezekiel 34:5-6.
4. They care for the sheep’s wounds.
- Jeremiah 23:2, 4; Ezekiel 34:4.
FULL TEXT:
The Pastor Is God’s Representative, Right? There are a lot of Biblical references where God is displeased with pastors.
- Jeremiah 3:15; Jeremiah 23:1-4; Ezekiel 34:1-31; Matthew 23:1-39.
- We tend to presume that pastors know what they’re talking about.
- Why?
a. They’re the experts.
b. There is general illiteracy of the Bible.
c. This is an issue that takes quite a bit of spiritual maturity to discern.
d. This is a big issue to get wrong.
- Jeremiah 23:1 – A woe on the shepherds.
- This is an amazing statement.
- Here we have the people that everyone presumes are God’s representative and God’s word to them is “Woe!”
- This could be individual or collective.
a. Individual.
- Sometimes it’s a single pastor that’s creating the trouble and it has to do with his idiosyncrasies.
- Maybe his real motive is power. Maybe his real love is attention. Maybe his real goal is building a personal empire.
b. Collective.
- Sometimes the system as a whole has become corrupt, but those within it have failed to discern it behind the small changes.
- Today there are things that almost no one questions, but which may be off.
- For instance, why do we spend so much on pastor salary and buildings? Or, the lack of discussion about repentance and obedience within many evangelicals’ salvation messages is another red flag.
- Pastors (and religious leaders generally) are not judged like everyone else.
- They are judged more strictly.
- James 3:1; Hebrews 13:17.
- “. . . we who teach will be judged more strictly.”/ “. . . as men who must give an account.”
- Why is that? A couple reasons:
a. They have the capacity to do disproportionate good or harm.
- When you have a good pastor, he has the capacity to impact a lot of people for Christ relatively quickly. The privilege of standing before a congregation to preach God’s Word can impact a lot of in a short time.
- Conversely, when you have a bad pastor, he can damage the name of Christ widely. His negative influence can touch a lot of people quickly. His story of unfaithfulness spreads more widely than an everyday person.
b. They are God’s representative to people.
- When they fail in that duty, it’s not just their reputation that in harmed – God’s name is as well.
- As we’ve said a lot in starting NewPoint, we’ve found that there are a lot of people out there who have given up on church because they’ve had a bad experience with a pastor.
- If it’s true in the OT and the NT, what are the odds that it’s true today as well?
- If we are not seeing the outcome that God said to expect, is that a sign that we’ve led the people off-track?
- Obviously, God is still faithful.
- Sometimes the issue is that the people are unwilling to be led.
- Often, the issue is that the shepherds are not leading the people well.
- Jeremiah 3:15 – What God wants to reinstate.
- God wants shepherds after His own heart.
- I want to look at four things that entails. These ideas are culled from these passages where the Bible shares what God thinks a good shepherd should look like.
What A Good Shepherd Looks Like:
1. The focus is on the sheep, not the pastor.
- Ezekiel 34:2-3; John 10:11-15.
- Is the main job of the pastor to “run the church” or to be a spiritual mentor?
- Most churches have defined the job as running the church: attend meetings, visit the sick, come up with an ambitious but inoffensive vision, make sure all the behind-the-scenes stuff is flowing smoothly.
- What they’re looking for is someone to care for their organization and “make the trains run on time.” They don’t mean this as a negative thing – they think it’s the job a pastor should do.
- The problem is that the time spent “running a church” requires necessitates that people are ignored. We’ve come to a place today where most people, beyond listening to him share the Sunday sermon, have no expectations of personal contact from their pastor. There is no thought of spiritual mentoring or that the goal of the church should be having a bunch of mature Christians, not a well-oiled organization.
- Too often it’s about using the sheep for pastoral ambition (bigger church, bigger sanctuary, bigger crowd, regional reputation, book deal).
- Ezekiel 34:3 speaks of them finding ways to benefit from the flock: using them instead of caring for them.
- Consider Eugene Peterson’s analogy of the church as a field (cultivated and fruitful for generations) vs. as a strip mall (manhandling the land and abandoned within a generation).
- It’s an important question to ask: is your shepherd shepherding?
- I don’t want to push this over to a me-first mentality, so let me clarify what I’m saying. I am not saying that your pastor says what you want to hear or preaches what makes you feel good.
- I mean that your pastor is invested in seeing you grow spiritually. That requires words of conviction sometimes. That requires asking challenging personal questions sometimes. That requires calling you on evidence of sin in your life.
2. They do their best to find lost sheep.
- Jeremiah 23:4; Luke 15:1-7.
- Jeremiah 23:4 speaks of “missing” sheep.
- Luke 15 tells the story of a shepherd who leaves 99 to go find the lost sheep.
- Of course, the thing about finding lost sheep is that it’s a long and exhausting process. After all, they’re lost. They could be anywhere over the countryside.
- Spiritually, seeking those who are lost is a long and exhausting process: some people don’t want to be found; some resist help; some distrust the shepherd and actively avoid him; some have given up hope of being a part of a flock again.
- Beyond the shepherd, a lot of Christians don’t really want their pastor seeking the lost too much because they want him to concentrate his time and attention on them. Now, they would never say, “Don’t try to get people saved” but the expectations they put on their pastor makes it impossible for him to actually pursue the lost.
- Most lost folks aren’t found as the result of the pastor spending five minutes with them. There has to be time to invest in relationships. There have to be opportunities to be outside the walls of the church.
- Many pastors find the demands placed upon them necessitate giving up a life outside the church.
- When churches do this, they’re essentially saying, “Shepherd, just stay here at the pen.”
- When we say, “We need more people so that our church can grow” we are putting things backward.
- That statement makes the salvation of people merely the means to the end of our real goal: a bigger church.
- Individual’s salvation is not a means to an end. It’s the end to which we’re working.
3. They stay diligent to keep sheep from getting separated from the flock.
- Jeremiah 23:2, 3; Ezekiel 34:5-6.
- One of the sadder things this passage brings out is that it’s not just that the sheep have been neglected and allowed to do whatever they wanted. Even worse than that, the shepherds’ work has actually scattered the flock and driven them away.
- This would translate to today to speak of those people who have been in church life and have been driven away by pastors.
- The idea that someone in a role that’s supposed to be focused on bringing them closer to God does things that actually drive people away from God is just horrendous. Yet it happens all too often.
- What does this look like? Some examples:
a. A dictatorial pastor who tells someone to do it his way or else.
b. An uncaring pastor who ignores the struggles that someone is going through.
c. A vengeful pastor who uses the pulpit to settle power struggles within the church.
d. An adulterous pastor who sin becomes public knowledge.
- The sad truth is that a massive number of people not going to church in America today once were part of a congregation.
- Undoubtedly, sometimes the blame falls on the side of the individual. People wander off on their own sometimes.
- But a lot of them were driven away and their faith was broken by the actions of a pastor.
4. They care for the sheep’s wounds.
- Jeremiah 23:2, 4; Ezekiel 34:4.
- Jeremiah 23:2 says that the shepherds were not caring for the sheep. Verse 4 says that under God’s plan they would no longer be afraid or terrified.
- Ezekiel 34:4 says the shepherds have not healed the sick or bound up the injured.
- People are messy, especially those who have been living without the power of God in their lives.
- There are addictions to overcome. There are consequences to the sin they’ve been doing that have to be dealt with. There are obstacles in moving to wholeness in Christ.
- Helping people in make that transition is hard work. Not only is it hard work, it’s long work. These things usually aren’t fixed overnight.
- There is a hesitancy to get down into the struggles people are having. It’s so much easier to throw out some advice from the pulpit or on a blog than to get down in the mud.
- That’s a large part of the pastor’s job, though – to bind up the wounded and help with the healing.
- Further, in many churches people are taught, explicitly or implicitly, to hide their wounds.
- We are supposed to come in on Sunday mornings and act like we have our act together. Don’t reveal that you’re struggling. Don’t share that you’re fighting a sin. Don’t show your tears.
- Because of that, we all look bright and shiny on Sunday mornings, like we’re the perfect incarnation of the righteousness of Christ. In truth, though, we’re more like the Pharisees – pretenders, posers, white-washed tombs.
- Church should be a hospital where you get cleaned up and make whole. Too often, though, we don’t want to admit to our mess because no one else around us in the pews seems willing to acknowledge their sin.
- A final point on this matter: the goal of the church is supposed to be many Christ-like people.
- In fact, though, we’re more often interested in a big congregation, an impressive budget, or a large building. As stated earlier, many congregations want a pastor to “run the church.”
- That means that the people are seen as a means to an end rather than the end. There isn’t time for the people because there’s too much busy work to get done.
- Because of that, there’s little time for attending to people’s needs, let alone the massive space needed to truly help folks grow.
