1160. Care For the Church of God

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. We're concluding a series from Acts 20, which was preached in Seminary Chapel at Bob Jones University. Today's speaker is Dr. Greg Stikes. We've been going through this section in Acts Chapter 20, and you notice if you're following Paul's speech up to this point, that Paul has really been focusing on himself. But in the middle of this speech, the Apostle Paul challenges the pastors. He exhorts them, he urges them, and it's actually the only instruction in the whole speech. Take heed, pay careful attention to. That's the governing imperative at the beginning of verse 28, prosecco, and it means to give great attention to something. In the negative sense, it's often translated beware, don't neglect, don't be distracted from your duty. Your duty to what? Well, if you look at the text, Paul calls them to give great attention to two areas.

You see them there? First of all, take heed to yourselves, and secondly, take heed to the flock. Watch yourselves and watch the flock.

Now, Dr. Cassius, I believe, has been charged with the first of those charges, watch yourself, and he's going to do that at a later time. I'm going to focus on giving attention to the flock, and primarily, this is an admonition to pastors. In fact, all of the major New Testament terms for the pastoral office are in the context here. In fact, if you go back to verse 17, Paul calls for the elders of the presbuteroi of the church to come, and then in our verse, verse 28, the word overseer here is used, episkopos, and then the word feed or care for in the ESV, poimino, is to shepherd or to pastor. So the New American Standard translates this, shepherd the church of God. But I want you to keep in mind as we unpack this text that God has called many people, both men and women, to minister to the flock of God. And whether you are called to function formally in a pastoral office, or maybe you're just lifting the arms of those in ministry through teaching and counseling and discipling, the admonition is clear to every single one of us. Take heed to the flock. Watch out for them.

Give careful attention to them. And this imperative goes right along with the word flock and shepherd, because a shepherd's number one job is to watch the sheep, to guard them, so you can protect them and nourish them and lead them. Two years ago, in Spain, in the dark hours of the morning, 1300 sheep wandered into a town.

I'm not making this up. You can actually watch the video online where all these sheep are there. And you can see the police cars trying to herd the sheep and everybody trying to corral them. And when they finally got to the bottom, what was going on? They went back to the place where the sheep seemed to have come from. They found the shepherd sound asleep on the ground.

I'm not making this up. The shepherd just went to sleep and the sheep said, okay, and they just wandered away into the town. And they had have a lot of help to get them back to the shepherd. Shepherding is a watchful business. You have to stay awake.

You have to always be on the job. Now, later, Paul is going to give us a practical reason for this. In verse 29, he says, wolves are going to come, false teachers are going to come and try to make disciples.

So beware. But this morning, I want us to just consider verse 28. How do we genuinely care for the church of God? How can we pastor or assist in pastoral ministry to lift the hands of those who are ministering? Well, after the imperative, take heed to all the flock. If you look at the text, you notice that there are these three phrases that help us understand what it means to shepherd.

And what I'm going to do here is I'm actually going to reverse one of these phrases to put them in chronological order. First, the Lord purchases his church. Second, the Holy Spirit appoints ministers. And finally, the ministers tend the sheep. And when we look at it that way, I think that we can see at least three dynamics of what it means to care for the church. And what is more, if we can see these dynamics and understand them, they will keep our ministries in biblical perspective.

So what are these three dynamics? Well, the first is this, the dynamic of a precious possession, the Lord treasures his sheep, because he refers to the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. Now, because it's a seminary chapel, and you all think a little more deeply than most crowds, I think that we can take a minute to unpack a little bit of what's happening here. There's an issue that comes up right away.

And can you tell what that is? The verse seems to say that God the Father purchased the church with his own blood. And I'll even put the Greek up there for some of you. And everywhere else in the New Testament, it's specifically the blood of Christ, which redeems. And the ancient Christian scribes appear to agree because so much of our manuscripts, so many of our manuscripts actually add this word instead of God, they add the word Lord, the church of the Lord, which he purchased with his own blood. Papyrus 74 and an Alexandrian text both have Lord, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus have God.

And really, it's kind of a balance with the external evidence, which way you go. But there are two problems, I think, with the reading church of the Lord. First, when you're evaluating a textual variant of those of you who have had NTI know, you lean toward the reading, which best explains the presence of the others, right? And it seems likely to me that a scribe would have changed church of God to church of Lord in order to alleviate the notion of the blood of God. But secondly, keep in mind that this is Paul talking. And in Paul's epistles, we never see church of the Lord, but we often see almost 10 times, in fact, Paul using the phrase church of God.

So what do we do with this reading? Well, we can assume that when Paul says he purchased with his blood, he's referring to Jesus Christ as sort of an invisible antecedent. Or we can reason that Paul refers to the blood of God, meaning the Godhead in general. So the second person of the Trinity over the Godhead is the one who's actually shedding his blood. Or we can take the path that some do and translate the Greek phrase this way, the blood of his own, that is his own son. But whatever direction we go, 1 Peter 1 19 rings out, we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish, or without spot. And when verse 28 says that God purchased the church, the verb he uses means to obtain for oneself to hold on to with care and personal interest.

It's a rare verb in the Greek New Testament, but Luke uses it in Luke 1733, where Jesus says, if anyone desires to save his life, to hold on to his life, to possess his life, he'll lose it. Do you know how clingy we are to our own life? Do you know how self protective we are? You know a lot of you maybe that if you ever find somebody who's drowning and you jump in to rescue them, you're not supposed to go near them.

You know what will happen, right? They will grab onto you because they're panicking. They're trying to save their lives. If you get this training, you're trained to push them away and get behind them and grab them from behind and get them to the shore, because they're not thinking. They're only trying to preserve themselves. We grab on preciously to our lives.

And this is somewhat of the idea here in this word purchased. Jesus did not shed his blood to rescue his sheep from their sins so he could merely put them as a trophy on his shelf. He treasures them. He holds them close.

He embraces them. Ephesians 5 25 says that Christ loved his church and gave himself for her. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3 16 through 17, he says, don't you know that you're the naos? That's the temple itself, not the hieron, the outer court, but the temple of the Lord. And he says, if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, which in short could simply mean God is going to deal with anybody who messes with his church, because his church is precious. He loves his church. As a pastor or layperson or one who counsels or ministers in the church and teaching and leading, this really has incredible implications for us. And I'll tell you what they are.

I'll give you just two of them here. First of all, we have to realize these are not our sheep. They belong to the Lord. They're his flock. And the attitude that some pastors may have, I think this is maybe stereotypical, but it's my church.

I'm not going anywhere. I heard a preacher once say, if you try to kick me out, I'm bringing a shotgun into this pulpit because this is my church and bless God, we had a backdoor revival and all of that kind of thing. I don't see that anywhere in the New Testament because we don't own those sheep. We're not their Lord and master. They're the Lord's sheep. And what is more, those sheep are precious to the Lord.

He paid dearly for them because he loves them. And we can see this theme in scripture that the Lord judges the wicked shepherds who are not caring properly for the sheep, but the sheep are cared for by the Lord who becomes the good shepherd, because this is his flock. And it was his flock long before you or I showed up to jump in and help minister to them. And they're going to be his flock, whether we are there or not.

Now that understanding would certainly lead us to ask a question. Well, if they're the Lord's sheep and they're going to be his sheep, whether we're there or not, how did we get involved in the first place? Well, that question is answered in the second dynamic of caring for the church of God.

It is the dynamic of a divine appointment. The spirit appoints overseers, because look at verse 28 again. It instructs, take heed to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you.

Overseers. How do we get involved with God's flock? We were placed there through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

It's the common verb tithame to put or place, but it's used here in a formal way of placing or appointing. And most likely these men were pastors from Ephesus who had had the experience of the laying on of hands. And Paul and others of his coworkers probably formally commissioned them to be shepherds of their churches.

But here, Paul doesn't mention the ceremonial event. What he mentions is what that ceremony symbolizes, which is the fact that the spirit is doing his work to lead these men to pastor in their churches. And rather than probe this interesting discussion about the minister's call and his appointment to preach the word, let me just say that if you are walking in the spirit and the Lord leads you to a place of ministry and you are convinced that this is of the Lord and the church affirms it even, that this is not merely a human process.

This is a divine process. However the Lord works through his spirit, the Holy Spirit is placing you within the body to exercise your gifts for the health and the doctrinal unity of that body. Now these two dynamics, the fact that the sheep are the Lord's precious possession and that they belong to him and not to us and the fact that we are divinely placed by the spirit into our place of ministry should put ministry in perspective for us whenever we serve the flock of God. We are appointees, we're overseers, we're managers, we're caregivers of the Lord's sheep.

We are placed there by God somehow through his spirit to serve him as well as the people. They're his people and the sheep of his pasture but we have the privilege of ministering to them. Do you remember what happened to Paul at Corinth? Paul administered like he had in every city and he got to the point in Corinth where Sosthenes had finally come to Christ.

I think Paul is expecting the Jews to revolt and to try to get him kicked out of the city or beaten like he was in Thessalonica and it was at this point in Paul's ministry that the Lord appears to him in a vision saying don't be afraid, go on speaking, do not be silent for I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you for I have many in this city who are my people. We could read that who are my sheep. They haven't even heard the gospel yet. They haven't responded in faith but the Lord knows they are coming to join his flock and he's calling and preparing a shepherd for them in the person of the apostle Paul. You see when we have the dynamics in place we realize the sacred responsibility that we have as ministers of the gospel. This is not a human calling, it's a divine calling. These are not our sheep, they're God's sheep and we are answerable not to men for how we conduct ministry.

We are answerable to the Lord. We are shepherding his sheep and we have that dynamic firmly in our minds we're ready for the third dynamic which is the dynamic of faithful ministry. The overseers shepherd the church of God.

Those are the terms that are used here in verses 28 and 29. The terms of shepherding and shepherding involves several essential tasks that I'd like to mention just briefly this morning. First of all a shepherd watches.

That as I said earlier is his primary responsibility. He's supposed to stay awake not let the sheep run into the town. He is invested. He watches the surroundings of the culture so he knows what challenges are coming from without. He watches for predators trying to enter the flock, those who are teaching heresy. He watches the sheep for things that are going on in their lives personally where they need spiritual encouragement.

It means that he knows the sheep and spends time with the sheep. This is an investment. It's not something that you can do every once in a while. You have to be watching.

You have to be investing. It takes a lot of time and watching then you are prepared to shepherd in other ways. For instance you are prepared to guard because a shepherd guards. He guards sound doctrine. He guards influences on the sheep. He guards the worship of the sheep. I think one of the duties of a pastor is to lead the church in worship at least to call the church to worship and to set the rudder for that and in counseling and in teaching to keep the scripture straight to watch and to guard the teaching and to be aware of who is coming into the body. His desire is to keep the Lord's sheep from wandering astray into error or into life choices that will be damaging for them and this kind of ministry can happen from the pulpit surely but it is often done as many of you know through one-on-one discipleship ministry and counseling ministry or simply coming alongside on a regular basis and it's something we can all participate in and as a pastor or a minister as a counselor one of the things you've got to learn is to not chase after all the problems all the time that you see in people's lives because the Lord is still shepherding them personally.

You can spend all your time fixing what you think are the big problems in people's lives and yet there are people over here trying to walk with the Lord and they would love to have a conversation and they just need a little bit of encouragement and they need to be watched and they need to be guarded as well. A shepherd watches and a shepherd guards and a shepherd feeds. In fact that's what we have in the King James for this the translation of this verb.

It's the primary idea in the translator's minds. The shepherd feeds the sheep. He makes sure that sheep get nourished and the word, mastering the word, studying the word so that we can lead people in the word. We have to be people who know the scripture. I mean we really have to know this book.

We really do. This is one of the primary ministries that we have to the sheep and no matter what your calling is no matter how you are led by the spirit to serve the body of Christ you need to spend your life learning and knowing how to rightly divide the word of truth. You want to be the kind of shepherd who can take the word of God and bring it to bear really on real world needs. To take the meaning of the text in its context and to bring it to bear in the first in the 21st century world not the first century world.

We need to know the meaning in the first century but we need to bring it to bear on the 21st century. So don't skimp when you preach or teach. Preach the word.

I mean teach the allergy. Deepen the flock's love for the word of God. Let them learn to feast as they can on the rich banquet of the word. Lead them to drink long refreshing drafts of the water of the word. Nourish them.

That's why you're the shepherd. Don't give them candy. Don't just tell them a bunch of stories. If you start getting old you're going to be repeating them anyway and they've heard them all.

Trust me. Don't be fluffy and let me talk to the ladies for just a second. I think most of you would really appreciate that and already agree with this but when you teach or speak like to ladies groups and to girls Sunday school and these kinds of wonderful ministries that ladies have today.

The traditional expectancy is for you to say things that are fluffy. Feel good kinds of things but women really need to hear teaching from women that is God-centered and scripturally sound and you can have a real shepherding ministry in the lives of women and young girls. More than ever today I think this is needed. Our young girls I see this. They're being pulled away by the culture. A culture starts going downhill when it's men start walking an ungodly path but when the women begin to do this this marks a second stage I think and that's even scriptural in the digression of a culture and women need to be grounded in the word and it may be the mature women of the church having a Titus 2 kind of ministry who are going to be used by the Lord to convince the next generation to walk in a godly manner. A shepherd feeds and a shepherd also leads and I'll tell you very quickly one of the best passages on how a shepherd is to lead his sheep I think is 1 Peter 5 2 through 3 that I just put up here for you and I put this in the ESV for clarity he says shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight not under compulsion but willing in other words nobody's making you do this if they're making you do this then get out of the ministry because you're just going to ruin the sheep not under compulsion but willingly as God would have you not for shameful gain you're not in it for the money most of us aren't okay but but eagerly you know if we get one of those big Texas churches maybe okay but for most of us it's not going to happen and not domineering over those in your charge notice not domineering but being examples to the flock there are two ways I think the shepherd leads in the New Testament one of them is not by forcing his way or being a dictator or authoritarian don't we we aren't to dare to do that because these are the Lord's sheep and they're precious to him not domineering over those in your charge but then he says being examples of the flock I think the first way that we lead the people is by saying this is what the scripture says and our authority as pastors is because we have the authority of the word of God and we can say thus saith the Lord that's our authority but then secondly the authority of an example you live like you should be for the people you be an example to them you lead them by example and there's something very compelling about the example it will give you the ability to say here's where we need to go you follow me we'll get there together and that's how we lead sheep it's interesting that in the west they drive sheep that's why we have sheep dogs and I think in the east some of this has been adopted as well but if you if you look at the eastern way sheep are led if you're in an old world kind of old part of the world where they're still doing it the way they did in the first century they don't drive sheep at all they lead sheep they call out and the sheep know the shepherd's voice and they follow this is what this is what we need to cultivate leading and feeding and finally none of our efforts in any of these areas are going to be effective if we neglect the last duty of the true shepherd and that is the shepherd loves and it what's make it what it's what makes everything else possible we need to love them as the good shepherd loves them who died for them and this is where true pastoral ministry begins I was four years as a associate pastor at a little church called grace baptist church in star South Carolina it's got two r's how many of you know where I'm talking about some of you okay my last two years of undergrad and my my two years of graduate school in the speech department I was associate pastor out there doing youth and and music and my first semester there and I really my first two years I was so arrogant I didn't know it I wouldn't have thought that of myself but looking back I really was you know why because I was from Michigan that's where the real people live right because we're Midwesterners and we don't talk so funny and we don't have these strange traditions these backward ways and we don't drive so many trucks okay and I had this whole attitude about how much better a person I was than the people I was ministering to but I didn't love these people as Christ sheet I didn't I wasn't grown up enough to love them and it wasn't until about two years into my ministry there was a family who had a major crisis and I won't go into what it was but my heart went out to them and I began to love them up until that time they kind of held me at arm's length and I went through times where I really couldn't get anybody to respond to my ministry I was starting to get discouraged discouraged and really I was thinking about just leaving and finding some of their ministry but my heart went out to them and the first time I really began to love them and desire to meet their needs and you can't fake that and the walls between me and that family came crumbling down and I began to experience the Lord doing wonderful things through my ministry my teaching and my leadership I was doing all the same things ostensibly that I had done before but I was loving the Lord sheep and I mark that time looking back in my life when my ministry for the Lord truly began in the church and the sooner you can learn to truly love the Lord sheep the sooner your ministry will begin as well because you will go through so much in ministry counseling counseling I mean you're tempted to grow so impatient why don't you get this right you know it's like I know the Holy Spirit's working your life but I wish he'd work a lot faster you know I wish he'd work in your life as fast as he works in my life and I just wish you'd grow up and why are you coming to me with the same problem did you do your homework no of course you didn't do your homework you never do anything you're screaming these things inside your head right but outside you're trying to be gracious okay your people will give you fits about this but you've got to love them you you you can't you it can't is not possible for you to desire their spiritual growth more than the Lord who bought them or you think this kind cometh not out by prayer and fasting you have that idea a lot of times in your ministry people will get angry with you also in in different ways for different things sometimes they will mistreat your family and your children they won't know they're doing this but they will they'll even spread rumors that are untrue and they won't come to you and say anything or they will complain but you need to love them and visit them and count them family and sit in their houses and visit and share the scriptures and pray with them and go through hard times with them at all hours I can't tell you how many times I've been in the hospital in fact I want some credit for pre-med on my college transcript because of what I know from just being in hospital rooms I know how to read those EKG machines I know a lot about IVs and and all kinds of things I've cared for people's wounds I've helped them throw up I've done all kinds of things like this but how in the world could you possibly do that some of you might revolve and say yuck I wouldn't want to do anything when you love people it changes everything some of you think I would be grossed out by all this kind of stuff away do you have kids and then it's like oh you know they're they're so lovely when they're when they're little anyway even though they're doing all these gross things and it's really about love it's about taking long trips when you need to to see them it's about sitting by their bedside it's about planning their funerals I've had three or four experiences of sitting with a dying member of the church planning what we're gonna say at their funeral next week helping them to go to the Lord ministering with them serving with them laboring alongside of them when I accepted the call the pastor Bethany Bible Church and stars in in Hendersonville South Carolina okay back up here Hendersonville North Carolina when I accepted the call the Bethany Bible Church that's where I was before I came to Bob Jones a few years ago I had been a youth pastor in Minneapolis and I made the announcement in Minneapolis Pat was there when I when I made this announcement back in the church I said I was going to resign and become the pastor of Bethany Bible Church in Hendersonville North Carolina and two people in that church in Minneapolis asked me on two separate occasions do they wear shoes down there I was like what an odd thing to ask and then two people randomly asked me the same question and I got to Hendersonville on the first Sunday we had a fellowship meal and after the morning service I was watching all these high school kids run around and I looked down at their feet and I was like oh I guess they don't wear shoes because it was a pretty casual kind of country church and and I had a lot a lot to get used to like about a month later after that one of my deacons had us over for a meal and we found their house out in the country running alongside a river and when we came inside only his wife and one of his daughters was there and I said well where's Chip and he said oh she said he and the boys are out in the barn the boys shot some squirrels this afternoon and they're out there skinning them well Chip comes in with the boys a little later and I don't see any squirrel pellets hanging from his belt like I thought it was and after he shook our hands his wife came out and she kind of whispered where are the squirrels and he said they're in my pocket I didn't want to gross out the preacher's wife he said and I'm thinking not to mention the preacher and and now I knew I mean I just knew that they were not going to serve us squirrel okay at the table but I will never forget that meal to this day because the whole time I'm with my fork kind of just lifting everything and making sure about what I was gonna put in my mouth and I'll tell you what we had some of the best experiences at that church our first Christmas my wife will never forget this we did a Christmas pageant with the children with the manger scene and the angels and everything and right before the kids came on my wife that's the only time she's ever had to say this well all the shepherds and wise men please remove your cowboy boots because this was the kind of culture it was it was the kind of world where if you went to a graduation party in your little Toyota hybrid you would park in this yard with towering trucks with all with lift kits you know and these are these big wheels but we loved those people because you know what Jesus says about those people those sheep he says in Hebrews 2 11 he's not ashamed to call us brothers Jesus Christ himself loves them and we were taking care of the Lord's brothers and sisters now listen shepherding caring for sheep has to involve feeding with the truth of God's Word it has to involve meeting with those who are not living in obedience and putting spiritual pressure on them to walk with God it has to involve knowing the dangers of the culture that they bring to the church it has to involve leading people in worship praying with people walking through hard times with them but you can have a perfectly exegeted text and put together a great worship service and diagnose a root problem in a counseling session and give the best advice to a youth group and show up when there is a crisis and it's not gonna matter to them until they know you genuinely love them Peter says in first Peter 5 4 when the chief Shepherd appears you will receive the unfading crown of glory let's let the New Testament text tell us what it means to be a shepherd of the Lord's people you've been listening to a message preached in seminary chapel by dr. Greg Stikes join us again next week for more preaching and teaching from the Bob Jones University Chapel platform