1 Peter 5:1-10 Therefore to the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ's sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: 2 Shepherd God's flock that is under your care, overseeing--not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; 3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. 5 In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble." 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
Introduction
You can always tell when a command in the Bible is especially important when it comes with a big buildup leading up to the command. In 1 Peter 5:2, Peter gives a command like that to the elders of the church. The command is to shepherd the flock, but listen to the buildup leading in to the command:
1 Peter 5:1 Therefore to the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ's sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: 2 Shepherd God's flock
That is a solemn and weighty command.
God Our Shepherd
Shepherd = Pastor
The Greek word in that command is poimen. The English translation is shepherd and the Latin translation is pastor. Whenever you say the word “pastor” you are just saying “shepherd” in Latin. So if you hear someone say, “Senior pastor” or “assistant pastor” or “youth pastor” that means senior shepherd, assistant shepherd, youth shepherd. Those two words are interchangeable – they mean exactly the same thing.
God Our Shepherd
And it is the perfect term to describe the way God takes care of His people. He is our Shepherd. And that idea did not originate in the 23rd Psalm. It goes all the way back to Genesis. When Jacob was on his deathbed he spoke of the God ... who has been my shepherd all my life to this day (Gn.48:15).
Ezekiel 34:15 I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD.
Psalm 23:1The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he restores my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Isaiah 40:11 He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.
Again and again, throughout the Old Testament, God calls Himself our Shepherd.
The Needs of Sheep
Why such an emphasis on this one analogy? It is because we are so similar to sheep in so many ways. There are over a billion sheep in the world right now, and every one of them would soon be dead if not for the shepherds who take care of them. Most animals were created with some kind of defense mechanism. Not sheep. God made them completely defenseless. They can't kick. They can't claw. They don’t bite. If one of them trampled you it would probably feel good on your back. They can't jump. They obviously are not built for speed – big, fat bodies with four little toothpicks for legs. They can't outrun anything. They just stand there and die. They have to be the most defenseless creature there is. In fact, the only thing sheep know to do when they are threatened by a predator is to group together. They huddle, so the wolf can have his pick. I guess the idea is that if you just stand next to a fatter, tastier looking lamb chop, you just increased your chases of survival.
On top of that, sheep are very easily confused and lost. Sheep can be completely lost within just a few miles of home.
Sheep are also very fragile emotionally. They are extremely easily discouraged. If something is hard, they just give up. I heard that sheep are so top heavy that if a sheep tips over onto its back, it can’t get itself back up. It will kick for a little while, and then finally just give up and die. I found that hard to believe, so I looked into it and sure enough – just type in “sheep on its back” in Youtube and you can watch one after another. They can’t get back up.
And after they have been stuck a while, they lose circulation and can’t walk. And again – they will try a couple times and then just give up. This sheep was stuck in mud, and when it was released, it tries one time to walk, falls, and just lays down in the mud and gives up. So the shepherd has to carry that lamb around until it gets circulation back. Same way if they get injured. They don’t have a strong self-preservation instinct, so if things get hard they often just give up.
Sheep could never survive without shepherds. I don’t know how the evolutions explain the existence of sheep, but it seems to me if evolution were true, the shepherd would have to have evolved first, before the sheep. Otherwise the very first sheep that ever came into existence would have gone right back out of existence before it had a chance to mate with anything.
Sheep are also very easily led astray. They have an instinct to follow a leader. And the leader is not necessarily the smartest or oldest or wisest sheep. Just whatever sheep starts moving first, they all follow – even if he has no idea where he is going. So sheep are very easily misled. In fact, in many cases the way they get sheep to go into the slaughter house is by training a goat to lead them in there. Sheep are very easily frightened, and if they have too much anxiety right before slaughter, the adrenaline can affect the meat, so they have to keep them calm. So they train this goat to just start walking into the slaughter house, they all follow it in there, a side door opens, the goat goes out, and the sheep are slaughtered. They actually call it the Judas goat. And the sheep will follow that Judas goat right in to the slaughter house just because he looks like he knows where he is going.
Sheep are so vulnerable. They get attacked and eaten by predators, they cannot do anything about it, they are easily lost, easily misled, easily confused, they can’t feed themselves, can’t take care of themselves, can’t defend themselves, can’t find their own way, and they are so easily discouraged that sometimes they just tip over and die.
If you read much about sheep at all it does not take long before you get the sense that God must have specifically designed sheep just to give us a look in the mirror. Our spiritual existence is so similar to the way sheep are. And not only in negative ways. When it comes to their relationship with the shepherd, they have some very good traits. You may have heard that sheep are especially dumb. But actually, compared to other animals, they are quite intelligent. They have extremely good memories – especially when it comes to the voice or the face of the shepherd. If a shepherd calls a sheep’s name, that sheep will come to him. And if the regular shepherd is gone and someone else is there, they will know. In fact, studies have shown that sheep can remember up to 50 different faces for two years. Sheep are specifically designed by God to recognize and follow the shepherd.
So the Shepherd-sheep analogy is perfect for us.
- We need guidance and God guides us.
- We need protection and He protects us.
- We many times need to be carried, and He carries us.
- We need to be fed and He feeds us.
- We need rest and He makes us lie down in green pastures.
- We become frightened or disheartened or discouraged, and we are ready to give up, and He restores our soul and strengthens and encourages us.
- We wander away from Him and He comes after us and brings us back.
- And many Judas goats would lead us astray, but He lets us hear His voice and know that it is His.
And just as sheep are designed for following a shepherd, so our souls are designed to follow Christ.
John 10:3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for [the shepherd], and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.
God Uses Under-shepherds
So God is our Shepherd. But how does He do this work of shepherding? When we need some specific help, how is that help delivered? Is it just given to us invisibly from heaven? Sometimes, but mostly He wants to shepherd us in ways we can see and hear and touch. So He calls human beings to serve as His under-shepherds to carry out His shepherding work in the flesh.
In Old Testament times, all the leaders in Israel were expected by God to shepherd the people. Whether it was mainly a political leadership position like a king, or a teaching role like a prophet or priest – all leaders were to be pastors. And He requires that those under-shepherds shepherd His flock the same way He does.
If they fail, they are in a lot of trouble.
Ezekiel 34:2 Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only shepherd yourselves! Should not shepherds shepherd the flock? ... 4 You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. 5 So they were scattered because there was no shepherd
10 ...I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves.
15 I myself will shepherd my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. 16 I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.
How are you going to do that God?
23 I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will shepherd them; he will shepherd them and be their shepherd.
That is a reference to the Messiah, who would be in the line of David. Jesus said, John 10:11 I am the good shepherd. We saw that earlier in 1 Peter. Back in 2:25, Peter said, you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. And down in verse 4 here in chapter 5, Peter is going to refer to Jesus as the Chief Shepherd. In Hebrews 13:20 He is called that great Shepherd of the sheep.
And how will Jesus go about shepherding?
Jeremiah 3:15 Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.
Jeremiah 23:4 “I will place shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing," declares the LORD.
The Messiah will come and take men of knowledge and understanding – men who have hearts for the sheep like His heart, and place those men over the sheep. They will be men who are devoted to carrying out the wishes of Christ for the sheep. And those men are the elders of the church. There is no difference between a pastor and an elder – they are just two titles for the exact same office.
That is the background behind the concept of a New Testament shepherd, or pastor. When it comes to leading and caring for God’s people, we must always take our cues from the way God leads and cares for them. But how far do we take that? Are there some aspects of shepherding that belong to God alone, and they are not for elders in the church to do? Of all the things shepherds do for sheep, which of them are specifically presented in Scripture as part of the job description of the elder in the church?
Feeding
What about feeding? In order to survive, sheep need to spend most of the day eating. They need a lot of food, and they are not animals that can hunt or even find their own pastures. If the shepherd does not move them to a new pasture they will over graze and eat the plants right down to the dirt and kill everything. So a big part of shepherding is feeding the flock.
Is that part of the analogy for leaders in the church? No question about it. When Jesus commissioned Peter to shepherd the sheep, He used the word “shepherd” interchangeably with the word “feed.”
John 21:15 "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?" "Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Feed my lambs." 16 Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?" He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Shepherd my sheep." 17 The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" ... He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Feed my sheep.
feed my lambs...
shepherd my sheep...
feed my sheep
Shepherding most definitely involves feeding.
The Meaning of Feeding
But what does that mean? That is still a metaphor. As shepherds, we are to do the same thing for people spiritually that food does for the body. When you put food into your body it is a pleasurable, satisfying experience that sustains your life by giving you nourishment for strength and energy and health so you can grow.
Through the Word
So how do we do all that in the spiritual realm? What did Peter tell us in chapter 2 will nourish us and make us grow up in our salvation? It is the pure, spiritual milk that comes through the living and enduring Word of God. Psalms 19 and 119 give a whole list of ways the Word of God strengthens and fortifies the soul – it makes you wise, gives you insight, it gives joy to your heart, it sustains your life. In Psalm 119, just in that one psalm, the writer repeats nine different times that the Word of God sustains and preserves life.
And it does so in a way that satisfies the cravings and desires of the soul. People are desire factories. They have longings and cravings and drives that shape all their behavior and direction in life. All of life is an effort to satisfy the deepest cravings of the soul. And it is the shepherd’s job to make sure those cravings are satisfied with good things – instead of garbage that will not ultimately satisfy. If a sheep wants to eat a piece of plastic or some poisonous weed or something, the good shepherd will say no, and give that sheep some nice, healthy, green grass to feed on instead.
How do you do that? Through the Word of God. When Scripture is understood and taken to heart, it brings satisfaction and joy and delight.
Jeremiah 15:16 When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear your name, LORD God Almighty.
Psalms 19:10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.
An Acquired Taste
Now, sometimes the meat of God’s Word is an acquired taste for people who are used to nothing but milk and junk food. If all they have ever been exposed to are sermons with lots of jokes and stories and movie clips and theatrics, and only the most basic, simplistic milk of doctrine, the first time they come into a church where there is in-depth, expository teaching, they might have a really tough time because their mind has been trained to only want amusement, not serious teaching. As teachers we want to make our teaching as listenable as possible, so we try to be good speakers so the delivery is not dry or confusing or repetitive or distracting, but in many cases we need to work to help people acquire a taste for the one and only thing that will ever bring real satisfaction to the appetites of the soul.
Through Prayer
So how do we feed the sheep? By teaching them God’s Word. That is one way. Another way is through prayer. The Bible will not have any good effect on their soul unless it is received by the soul, and that only happens through a special work of the Holy Spirit. When Paul wanted the people to be strengthened, what did he do? He prayed!
Ephesians 3:16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being
When Paul wanted the people to have joy and hope, he prayed.
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
He prayed for their love to increase, and their knowledge and understanding and wisdom and their faith and endurance and patience and perseverance and discernment and sanctification.
Protection
So, shepherding involves feeding, and the flock is fed through Scripture and prayer, and fellowship. What else? Another critical part of shepherding is protection. The primary thing the bad shepherds in Ezekiel 34 are rebuked for is failure to protect the sheep.
Ezekiel 34:3 Woe to you shepherds of Israel ...4 ... You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. ... 5 and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals.
Acts 20:29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
The danger is real, and it is constant. We live in the age of information. With television, radio, book and magazine distribution, and the Internet, every person in our culture is bombarded with massive amounts of information. And well over 90% of it is controlled by the devil.
1 John 5:19 the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
The primary way sheep are destroyed is by being led astray. More than anything else, Satan wants the people to believe things about God that are not true. He can do more damage to you that way than any other way. So he works at it all day long, every day. If you are a shepherd, the people under your care are constantly getting influential messages that are telling them lie after lie after lie.
- God didn’t really create the world.
- God doesn’t really control all things.
- God doesn’t really know the future.
- God does not really love you very much.
- God is mostly angry at you.
- God’s ways are not the best.
- God doesn’t even exist.
- Jesus is nothing more than a good prophet.
- The Bible is full of mistakes.
- It is just a book written by man.
- If it feels good, it must be right.
- You deserve to do this sin.
- God hasn’t really forbidden it.
- You can sin now and make up for it later.
It goes on and on and on. It never stops, all day every day. The enemy never stops bombarding the sheep with lies because he knows he can destroy them if he can just get them to believe things about God that are not true. And it is the elder’s job to protect them from all that.
Hebrews 13:17 Obey your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you
The elders’ job is to stay on guard duty all the time and keep watch over your soul to protect you from threats.
Not only that, but it is also the shepherd’s job to restore you after you have fallen prey to threats. Jesus taught that a good shepherd will leave the 99 and search for the one that wandered off. Sometimes you will hear us speaking about the 100th sheep mentality we try to foster at Agape. That is one of the reasons the prayer group system is set up the way it is – so no one falls through the cracks. We do not ever want to fall into thinking just in terms of overall numbers. “We had 100, now ten of them are gone, but that does not matter because we got ten others to replace them.” That is not the way a shepherd thinks. If a sheep is lost, he goes after it. This has always been something that has been very convicting to me. I read Ezekiel 34 and ask, “What am I doing to go seek after the stray sheep?” When people don’t show up to church it is easy to develop a negative attitude toward them and say, “If they don’t want to be here, fine. Let them go.” But that is not the heart of a shepherd.
Ezekiel 34:3 Woe to you shepherds of Israel ...4 You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost.
8 ... my shepherds did not search for my flock
11 "'For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep ...12 I will rescue them
16 I will search for the lost and bring back the strays.
If one of the kids sneaks out of the nursery we don’t want the nursery worker to say, “Oh well. We still have lots of kids left.” No, you drop everything and go look for the one that strayed and bring him back. That is the heart of a shepherd.
Through Scripture
How do we do all that? We do it by applying the Word of God to people’s hearts.
Psalms 119:110 The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from your precepts.
The Word of God is what protects us, and so we protect the flock through preaching and teaching the Scriptures. We have to take every idea and force it into obedience to Christ. We have to correct the false notions people have about God and His ways. And if all we do is skim the surface and talk only about the most basic things, while Satan is feeding them lies about every little detail of life, the sheep will be led astray. Our teaching needs to be detailed, it needs to be accurate, it needs to be profound, it needs to be relevant, it needs to be understandable, it needs to be compelling, and it needs to take them deeper into truth about God than where they already are.
So we protect the sheep through good teaching and preaching. But it does not end there. You cannot protect people from the pulpit alone. The enemy follows them into their homes, follows them to school, he is there at work. He will tailor his lies to every specific situation in their lives, so generalized principles from the pulpit won’t be enough. You have got to be there with people one on one. You preach about “husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church,” but one guy hears that from the pulpit and he does not see any connection between that and the tone of voice he uses when he talks to his wife. And so you have to come alongside him individually and show him in very specific terms what it looks like in his case to live out this principle.
And if you get tempted to think, “I can’t do that. My job is to stand in the pulpit and preach – it’s other people’s job to handle the individual counseling and discipleship” – if you start to think that you are somehow above that individual level of teaching, ask if you are at a higher level than the Apostle Paul.
Acts 20:20 You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house.
So how do you protect the sheep? Through teaching. Preaching to the whole church, and instructing individuals one on one.
Through Prayer
That is one way. But there is another important way to protect the sheep: prayer. When Jesus wanted His disciples to be protected from the evil one, He prayed for them.
John 17:15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.
Leadership/Guidance
So what all do shepherds do for sheep? They feed them, they protect them, and then third, they lead them. Sheep need guidance. They will follow someone, and if it is not the shepherd, it will be whoever else is moving with confidence in some direction. If someone speaks up with confidence and authority, people will follow that person – even if it is someone with no wisdom or spiritual insight.
And even if there is no one leading them the wrong way, people still need a strong leader because most of us, without leadership, will do very little. It always amazes me how little gets done when there is no leadership. I remember we had a New Year’s Eve party once, and everyone who wanted to play Taboo went into the living room. A half hour later, everyone in that room was still just sitting around chatting. Finally someone said, “Hey, let’s get the game started,” and everyone immediately jumped in. They were all willing, they were all eager – but it was not going to ever happen until someone took a little leadership. It did not take much leadership – but without him saying, “Hey, let’s get started,” and then opening up the box, it wasn’t going to happen.
When you get into a group that has no leadership at all, it is painful. It is like people are paralyzed. You can’t even decide on which fast food restaurant to go to. No one even cares, and it is the most unimportant decision there is, but it takes a half hour because no one will just say, “OK, let’s just go to Taco Bell already.” Someone else says, “I hate Taco Bell.”
“Do you like Wendy’s?”
“Sure.”
“Everyone else OK with Wendy’s? OK then, let’s go to Wendy’s.”
When we get into groups, we need leadership even for some of the smallest decisions in life. And we really need it in the big decisions. Churches routinely make some of the most important decisions that are made in the universe, because the church is the household of God. It is the body of Christ. It is the headquarters for the kingdom of God in this world. How is the money going to be spent? What kinds of meetings are we going to have? How are the ministries going to be organized? What approach are we going to take to accomplish what God has called us to do? Sometimes churches make decisions that result in their whole ministry spiraling downward until they finally collapse under the weight of discord and disunity and anger. Other times churches make decisions that result in amazing fruitfulness and countless souls being saved for the next 100 years. Nowhere is decision making more important than in the church. And so the guiding role of the shepherds is crucial.
And leadership is more than just decision-making. Even though people are like sheep, there are plenty of times when you can say, “Come on everyone, let’s go!” and go charging off in a burst of confidence, and you turn around and find no one is following. So you have to circle back and work toward inspiring them to go that way. Especially if the way is hard. It might take some teaching from God’s Word, and some persuasion and inspiration and motivation before they will be willing to follow. One of the hardest things I have had to learn as a leader is that people are not automatically excited about an idea just because I had it. And people are not automatically excited about an idea just because I am excited about it. Sometimes it takes some long-term persuasion.
And there have been many times in my life when half way through that long term effort to persuade and inspire everyone, I finally realize, “Wait a minute. People aren’t excited about this because it’s not even the way God is leading. It’s just something I wanted. I thought it was the way God was leading, but now I can see I was wrong about that.” That is the great thing about leading mainly through teaching God’s Word. If you do it that way, you end up with a bunch of sheep who are really good and hearing the voice of the Chief Shepherd, and so when you, as an under-shepherd, get a little mixed up and try to lead them off in the wrong direction, they don’t follow. They just stand there and wait for you to realize you are going the wrong way. But even congregations like that need strong leadership and guidance from men of God who know the will of God.
Through Scripture
How are they going to know that? How do we make sure we are guiding and leading in the right direction? By following the Word of God.
Psalms 119:105 Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
Proverbs 6:23 For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light, and correction and instruction are the way to life
Everything we do must be an effort to guide the people in the paths laid out before us by the Word of God. But what about issues that are judgment calls? We might have to make a decision, should we have the singing time before the sermon or after the sermon? Would it be better for the elders to meet together once a month, or once a week? Would it be worth the cost to put brighter lights in the parking lot? Every one of those decisions must be made based on biblical principles, but that is a difficult thing to do. Which principles are the most applicable, and how should they be applied? We will never get that right unless the Holy Spirit helps us. And so we pray.
Through Prayer
Psalm 25:4 Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. 5 Guide me in your truth and teach me
We do not guide people in our own ways. We do not lead people in any direction other than what we believe God is pointing us to. And that is only discovered through the Word of God and prayer.
Rest
What else do shepherds do for the sheep? They provide them with rest. If sheep sense danger, they won’t sleep, and so the shepherd has to provide them with a secure enough environment to be able to sleep. When David was praising God as his Shepherd, one of the things he said was, “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He gives me rest.” Is that part of the pastor’s job? Yes. There are people in the church who are in a constant state of agitation spiritually. They live in constant fear of the future. Or they have unending, inner turmoil because of anxiety or worry or anger or confusion. They think that God is unhappy with them all the time. Or they think they have to be in charge of protecting their own wellbeing, which is a 24/7 task. Or maybe they are approaching ministry with a “What a burden” attitude, so that when they put on the yoke of ministry it is a heavy, burdensome yoke rather than a coming to Christ for rest. And as a result they get burned out. And it is the elder’s job to give those people rest. How? By telling them to take the week off? No – people like that will be just as burdened during time off from ministry as while they are working. Jesus said, “Come to me, and I will give you rest.” We provide rest for people like that by showing them how to use their ministry to draw near to Christ.
Through Scripture
And how do you do that? When you become weak or unmotivated, lethargic, apathetic – you have lost your passion and drive for ministry, and you just feel like you need a spiritual energy drink. What is it that will renew and refresh and re-invigorate your soul?
Psalm 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.
It is God’s Word that provides refreshment and strength and comfort.
Psalm 119:76 May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise
Psalm 119:28 My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word.
Through Prayer
Helping the sheep find rest is done through applying the healing, rest-giving balm of Scripture to their weary souls. And it is also done through prayer.
James 5:14 Is anyone among you weak? Let him call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will restore the weary person; the Lord will raise them up.
Your Bible might say “sick” rather than “weak” the first time and “weary” the second time, but the way I read it is a very literal translation. That second word means to become weary or discouraged. When a person is weak and weary and discouraged he should go to the elders of the church and ask for prayer. And the prayers of the elders will restore that person.
Conclusion
So what does all this mean for you? Let me give you a few brief applications.
1) Obey Your Leaders
First, if this is the purpose of elders in the church, cooperate!
Hebrews 13:17 Obey your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
The reason shepherds exist in the church – the reason God gave us elders – was to deliver to us the various forms of grace that come that great Shepherd of the Sheep, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not resist that. Listen to the shepherds God has placed over you, follow them as they follow Christ, and enjoy being tended by Jesus Christ through them. Instead of constantly critiquing their leadership, or gambling about it or gossiping about it, submit to it.
2) Shepherd Others
Second, use these principles to shepherd the people who are under your care. Every one of you is a leader of someone. Use these principles to shepherd those sheep that tend to follow your lead.
3) Rejoice in the Great Shepherd
And third, use this portrait of a good shepherd to increase your love for Jesus Christ, who is the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. Every time one of the elders here does something that benefits you, take that as a gift coming to you from the Lord Himself, who called and gifted that elder to serve you in that way. And every time an elder disappoints you, use that disappointment as a reminder of how God is not lacking in that area where the elder is lacking. The fact that it hurts you, the fact that it saddens you – that just goes to show how important and wonderful the qualities of the Good Shepherd really are. Some qualities you cannot fully appreciate until you feel the pain of how miserable it is when they are lacking. So whenever we fall short, let that turn your attention to the One who never falls short, and praise God that He is your Shepherd, and so you will never lack anything.
Benediction: Hebrews 13:7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
1:25 Questions
1. Was there anything in particular in the discussion of what a good shepherd does for the people that struck you as especially desirable? That is – if a leader had that quality, you would regard him as an especially good leader? What is it? Spend the week seeking to enjoy experiences of that attribute of God as the Lord shepherds you.
2. What aspect of shepherding do you need to improve in the most for the people who follow your leadership (feeding, protecting, guiding, or giving rest)?
