The Sheep's Responsibility

The church is the only institution Christ promised to build and bless. And I take great comfort and confidence in the fact that I am a part of the greatest institution on the face of the earth, the local church. And I'm thankful for having a small part in our Lord's great work of building the church. You probably know John F. Kennedy's famous words from his inauguration, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Well, bouncing off those words, consider something that's really far more important. Not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church. So what is it you can do and should do to help your congregation become more vibrant, healthier, and, well, Bible-driven? John MacArthur is showing you that in his current study on grace to you.

He's titled it, The Bible-Driven Church. And now with today's lesson, here's John. Well, let's open our Bibles for our time in God's Word, chapter 5 of 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5 of 1 Thessalonians. We're studying verses 12 and 13.

Let me read them to you, 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 and 13. But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work, live in peace with one another. These two verses discuss how the sheep are to treat the shepherd, how the shepherds are to treat the sheep within the framework of Christian fellowship in the church. We talked about the responsibility of the shepherds to the sheep, how shepherds are to care for their sheep.

That, of course, was a message close to my own heart as a shepherd who has sheep and a responsibility before God to do that kind of care. And as I was mulling over the joys, the difficulties, the trials, the tribulations, the exhilarations of being a pastor, I was reminded that a few months ago, Phil Johnson and I were having lunch, and as I was munching my chicken sandwich, I said, you know, Phil, I think I'd like to write an article on why I'm a pastor, just so that everybody understands that no matter what profile I might appear to have in the outside world, the heart of everything is pastoring, and that's what God's called me to do, and that's what I really am. And he said, well, how would you do it? I said, well, what about if I wrote an article on 10 reasons why I am a pastor? And I just whimsically said 10. And he said, well, can you think of 10? And I said, I bet I can.

You got a pencil? And so he began to write, as I articulated, 10 reasons why I'm a pastor. My thinking was originally stimulated when I read the biography of Jonathan Edwards, written by Ian Murray, and learned about all the personal heartaches he had had in his church. He pastored the church. He kicked him out, devoted him out.

After all that time of a profound and blessed ministry, Jonathan Edwards even was the key leader in the great American awakening, the greatest revival that's ever hit this nation. His church didn't seem to take that into account. And while I don't anticipate such a fate, I do know... I do know what it is to suffer criticism. I do know what it is to be the constant subject of accusation both inside the church and outside the church. There have been moments, believe me, when leaving the church was attractive to me. And there is almost a constant query to me, why don't you leave Grace Church and do something else?

But I have never contemplated any such move seriously because I love my calling from God and I love my place and I love my people. I remain wholly, totally committed to the duty of a pastor and there are a number of reasons why. Let me just rehearse for you briefly those 10 reasons why I'm a pastor or why I'm a shepherd. Number one, the church is the only institution Christ promised to build and bless.

He said, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. And I take great comfort and confidence in the fact that I am a part of the greatest institution on the face of the earth, the local church. And I'm thankful for having a small part in our Lord's great work of building the church. Secondly, I'm a pastor because the corporate functions of the body all take place in the church.

As soon as you move outside the church, you divorce yourself from the place of celebration, the place of worship, the place of the Lord's table, the place of baptism, the place of encouragement, the place of edification, the place of instruction. And if we are going to come, as the psalmist said, and worship and bow down, and if we're going to come and take of the Lord's table and if we're going to come to the waters of baptism and if we're going to come to be fed and taught and nurtured and discipled and to enjoy the riches of fellowship, that all happens in the local church. Thirdly, I'm a pastor because preaching is the chief means God uses to dispense His grace. The Apostle Paul commanded Timothy to preach the Word.

It is through the preached Word, through the proclamation of the Word that people are edified and built up and encouraged and strengthened and motivated and confronted and convicted and rebuked and reproved and restored. I have the privilege each Sunday of proclaiming God's message once in the morning and once at night. Fourthly, I'm a pastor because I can be consumed with study and communion with God all my life long.

I would hate to be involved in administrating some organization where I was caught up in the minutia and the trivia and the details of things that are other than the Word of God because I am consumed by the things of Scripture. Someone asked me, what drives you? And I said, it's my love for the Word of God. That's what drives me and the fact that I can spend my whole life doing what I love to do is to me a great thrill. I was talking to a professional baseball player and I said, what do you like the best about what you do? And he said, what I like best about it is that I'm doing what I love to do.

So am I. In fact, what I love to do just happens to lead me into personal, private, constant communion with God in the pages of Scripture. The reality of prayer is absolutely inseparable from the exercise of preparation. I cannot in the process of preparation divorce myself from an ongoing conversation with God. As I seek to know His mind and His heart and His will and have Him apply in my heart what it is that I'm studying and learning and shall sooner or later preach. That's the joy, that's the love, that's the passion of ministry. Fifthly, I am a pastor because I am directly responsible to God for the lives of the people He has given me to shepherd.

And I love that accountability. I don't mind being a teacher on the radio. I don't mind writing books. I don't mind sending out my words to people I don't know, whether they hear me on the radio, listen to a tape or read a book. But I have a relationship with my people like that of a shepherd to the sheep and I have the privilege and the call of God to watch over their souls as one who will give an account to God.

And the only way I can discharge that calling is in a local church. I cannot be accountable for the souls of people on a radio program. I cannot be accountable for the souls of people who listen to me on a tape or read a book. I can only be accountable to God for the souls of the sheep in my own flock. And to that I have been called and to that I desire to be faithful. Sixthly, I am also accountable to the people in my church. Not only am I accountable to God for the people in my church, but I'm accountable to the people in my church for being faithful to God. Everything is exposed there, my wife, my children, my family life, my personal strengths, my personal weaknesses, the things I love, the things I hate, a style of life I live. It's all there and I cherish that accountability.

You say, why? Because it holds me where I need to be held. It's a constant encouragement for me to reflect Christ in everything I say and do because that's the only way I can undergird a message. Number seven, I am a pastor because I love the challenge of building an effective leadership team from the people God has put in the church. I really believe that to be an effective leader in the church is the most challenging enterprise there is on the face of the earth. There are a number of reasons why. One of them, for example, is when you start a business or a company and you want to be successful, you can hire anybody you want. But when you build a church, you've got to take what God gives.

That's very different, very different. And it's a volunteer organization. You not only take what God gives, you take what the people God gives are willing to give. And it's out of that kind of challenge that you're called to build a leadership team that can advance the kingdom of God. And frankly, I'm not saying this to despair, but I want you to know the Bible says, not many of you are wise, not many of you are mighty, and not many of you are noble.

First Corinthians 1 26, we're basically the common folks of the world, aren't we? And I thank God again and again that He didn't stick me in some elitist kind of church. I didn't want to ever pastor a church made up of the elite. I wanted a church that was the cross-section of the whole of the body of Christ, where there were only a few who would be considered the mighty and the noble, and most of us would be just the faithful folks. I see myself among them and it's been a tremendous joy to see the Spirit of God build a leadership team and advance His kingdom through our church.

What a challenge that is. Number eight, I'm a pastor because the pastorate embraces all of life, all of life. I don't know about you, but I love adventure, and I love variety.

And if you want a life of adventure and variety, be a pastor. No two days are the same. No two days are the same. I was never made to work on an assembly line. I would be somewhere under the bed saying the Greek alphabet in a few weeks if I was working on an assembly line.

It would drive me stark raving mad. My mind gravitates toward variety and that's because God's designed me for that. And that is true in the ministry. It embraces all of life. I can share the joy of parents over the birth of a child. I can share the pain of parents over the death of a child. I can share the joy of a wedding. I can share the comfort necessary at a funeral. The gamut of life is exposed to the pastorate, all of the joys and exhilarations and happy times of life, all of the tragedies, difficulties, trials and pains of life.

It is an incredible adventure which can begin at any moment because any time anything out of the ordinary happens, I'm somehow involved in that. It is a joy to go beyond the sermon which is the predictable part of the ministry into the unpredictable part as you stand in the gap for God in the place of Christ in the lives of people. I am a pastor for two other reasons. Number nine, I'm afraid not to be a pastor.

And that's the truth. When I was 18, God threw me out of a car going 70 miles an hour. I landed on my backside and slid 110 yards on the pavement. By the grace of God, I wasn't killed. By the grace of God, I was committed to become a pastor because prior to that, I knew the Lord had called me to that. I was being rebellious and I decided if the Lord's going to fight like that, I'm going to give in and be a pastor or whatever else He wants me to be. Every time I scratch my back, I feel the scars of that because they're still there to remind me that I should be faithful to the pastorate or there might be another highway somewhere in my future.

And that's all right. And lastly, I'm a pastor because the rewards of pastoring are absolutely marvelous. I have to tell you, I feel loved, I feel appreciated, I feel needed, I feel trusted, all of those things.

Why? Not because of me, but because being an instrument of God changes people's lives. When God uses you to preach His Word, teach His Word, apply His Word, people's lives change and you have the sense of a marvelous, marvelous meaning to life. Life is so valuable for me because of what God uses it to accomplish.

I know you pray for me, I know you care for me, I know that. I owe a debt of gratitude to God for that because I'm not worthy of that, but I understand that. That goes with the territory of being a channel through which the grace of God can flow to people.

Though it is God doing it all and God's Spirit doing it all, as the thanks is passed back to God, somehow it gets passed through the channel that it came through. That's a wonderful and exhilarating reality. When all is said and done, the joy and fulfillment of being a pastor is the response and the mutual love that the sheep and the shepherd share. And it has been the response of the sheep to the shepherd that have made this ministry so exhilarating for me. And I think anyone in the ministry would say that. With all of those ten things I gave you, the bottom line is this, I'm in the ministry because the rewards are so great and the rewards are eternal and eternally the value of a relationship between a shepherd and his sheep. What a great truth. I suppose all the shepherds in this flock, all the elders of this church would agree that the joy of ministry is linked to the attitude of the sheep toward the shepherd.

When God passes the truth through me to you and you pass the thanks through me to Him, that's a tremendous joy. I'll tell you, not everybody experiences that. The driveways of many churches are blackened with the skid marks from the hasty exits of pastors who have been abused and bashed by a heartless, thankless people. That has not been my case. But it does pose the question for us in the text, how are shepherds to be treated? How are you to treat the shepherd? Now I give this message with a little reluctance because somebody will surely say, well somebody's been after John so he preached this message to straighten him out.

Not true. You know we just happened to arrive in chapter 5 at verse 12 and 13, right? And you know that we are compelled by the plan of God, not by some personal agenda of mine.

Now for some people, they don't even think about this. Sometimes the issue is little more than a joke, like the pastor who was literally bothered to distraction by one man who fell asleep every Sunday through his sermon. And the man was a prominent church member and he slept through every sermon. Finally the pastor decided, I don't care if he's prominent, I don't care if he's a big giver, I have to confront him. And he said, why sir do you fall asleep when I'm delivering my sermon? It shows a lack of respect. To which the man answered, do you think I'd sleep if I didn't trust you?

Look, I don't need that kind of trust if it's the same to you. How are sheep to treat their shepherds? How are sheep to treat their shepherds? The following article entitled, How to Get Rid of a Pastor, appeared in a church bulletin.

Listen to it. Not long ago a well-meaning group of laymen came from a neighboring church to see me. They wanted me to advise them on some convenient and painless method of getting rid of their pastor.

I'm afraid, however, that I wasn't much help to them. At the time I had not had the occasion to give the matter serious thought, but since then I have pondered the matter a great deal and the next time anyone comes for advice on how to get rid of the pastor, here's what I'll tell them. One, look the pastor straight in the eye while he's preaching and say amen once in a while and he'll preach himself to death.

Two, pat him on the back, brag on his good points and he'll probably work himself to death. Three, rededicate your life to Christ and ask the preacher for some job to do, preferably some lost people you could win to Christ and he'll die of heart failure. Four, get the church to unite in prayer for the preacher and he'll soon become so effective that a larger church will take him off your hands.

It does raise some vital questions when we think about it. How are we to treat the pastor? A survey of three thousand churches, pastors and laymen included in the survey, asked the question, what are the main reasons people drop out of a church? One of the most common replies was, I don't like the pastor. What is our duty?

Let's go back to our text. We already looked at the responsibility of the shepherds to their sheep and we noted that they are to labor among the sheep, first of all. Secondly, they are to exercise authority over the sheep and they are to give instruction for the sheep.

We carefully delineated those three things. The first point, laboring among the sheep, you notice there in verse 12, those who diligently labor among you, pastors, elders, overseers, shepherds are to labor hard, work to the point of exhaustion in a sacrificial life of service alongside the sheep. Total dedication is seen there. That's the servant role of humility. And then note please also, they have charge over you in the Lord. They have authority over the sheep. By virtue of the Lord's calling for His sake, by His will, for His glory, they are to preside and direct and lead. And then at the end of verse 12, they are to give you instruction, instruction for the sheep. Teaching is the primary element. They are to be skilled teachers, skilled at delineating and disseminating the word of truth. Now let's go to the responsibility of the sheep to their shepherds.

And this is very, very basic. I mean, the church has to know this. This is the bottom line in our relationship together. Sometimes sheep can be very hard on shepherds. Somebody said, we think sheep are cuddly little creatures because the only ones we ever deal with are stuffed.

That's true. If you've ever worked with sheep, and I have been exposed to them just enough to know they are weak, helpless, unorganized, prone to wander, demanding, dirty and have sharp hooves. And when the Lord was describing us as sheep, He was talking about sheep as sheep, not sheep as stuffed animals. Sheep can make life joyless for the shepherd if they don't follow the path of their duty.

They can make life miserable if they're not obedient. So let's look at the three characteristics or principles that we're enjoined as sheep toward our shepherds. Number one, appreciate your shepherds. Verse 12 says, we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction. The word appreciate for a moment is oida in the Greek. It means to know. It is a common word used all over the New Testament for to know. But it means the kind of knowledge that comes by experience, to have learned to know, to have come to know, to by experience to arrive at knowledge. And here it has the idea of a deep knowledge and a knowledge that includes in it respect and appreciation. To know and to value is the implication of it here. Perhaps the best translation is the word to appreciate.

Another one might be that you value those who diligently labor among you, that you respect those who diligently labor among you. It doesn't mean to know their names, not that kind of simplistic knowledge. It doesn't mean to know just the names of their children or their wife or their zip code or where they live or whatever school they graduated from or what kind of car they drive or whatever. It means that you have come into a deep and intimate personal acquaintance that leads to appreciation. You know them well enough to care about them.

That word know is sometimes translated to refer to the physical act between a man and a woman, the deep kind of knowledge, the intimate kind of knowledge where a man knows a woman and she becomes the bearer of a child. It's the sense of knowing someone and the worthiness of that someone. I'm constantly given a comment when I enter into questions of people who listen to me preach very, very frequently. They will say to me, I feel like I know you. I've never been personally acquainted with you. I haven't spent a lot of time with you, but I feel like I know you.

And what they're really saying is that because they have listened for so long to the pouring out of the heart of the preacher, there's a sense in which you know that person. And I always reply by saying, well if you've been listening to me, you know me because what you're hearing is what is me. I am not what I look like.

In fact, I tell people all the time when they meet me and say, oh I listened to you on radio for years, I say I know I look better on radio. It isn't a question of what I look like. You don't know me by knowing what I look like, you know me by knowing what I feel, right? You know me by knowing what comes out of my heart. You know me by knowing the passions of my life.

It's easy to be unkind and it's easy to be critical and it's easy to be indifferent. To someone you don't know deeply and intimately. But when you know someone and you've come to know them by experience and you understand the passion of their heart, there's a certain respect that is born out of that kind of knowing. And so it is incumbent upon you that you come to know your leaders. If you're going to respect them and appreciate them and admire them and understand their worth and their value, it means that you are going to have to come to know them.

And then when you know them, you show them that kind of respect. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. John is Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. He calls our current study the Bible-Driven Church. Now John, let me ask a question that's related to what you said today about the pastor and his people. Share with our listeners some of the ways your congregation has encouraged you, ways that are especially meaningful, things that our listeners could be doing for their pastors.

Yeah, that's really a good question. And I have to say, I must be the most blessed of all pastors, half a century with the same people. I'm now holding the great-grandchildren of some of the original people that were at Grace when I came. So I have longevity, and longevity of this kind, generational ministry with the same group of people, brings blessings that are hard to even imagine. I think typically a pastor may stay two or three years in a church.

That might even be high. But to be somewhere for half a century, the bonds of love that are built are just amazing. I'm experiencing something that most men in the ministry would never experience. So I would have to say, first of all, what the congregation shares with me that is the greatest amount of encouragement is their love. And it's not a love because of my personality or because I necessarily have a lot of private time with people to build a bond of relationship. In a large church like ours, that love is shared around the Word of God.

They love the one who brings them the truth of God. And when you do that year after year, year after year, decade after decade, the bond of love is very strong. I do have opportunity to be in their lives and to care for them personally, but there's a bond of love, and it shows up in encouragement, just constant encouragement. To me, notes, letters, I can barely absorb all of that that comes to me all the time. Prayer, we're praying for you.

Please know how much we pray for you and thank the Lord for you. Inviting people to the church they love. They love their church, and so they bring people to hear the Word of God. They trust the teaching.

They trust the lives of the leaders. So I think it's just all the myriad expressions of love that they pour out to me, to Patricia, to our family that is the benediction of all benedictions in terms of the years of ministry at Grace. Yeah, thank you, Jon. And as a member of your congregation, I know that the love we have for you is tied to our mutual love for biblical truth, which you are committed to teaching and proclaiming and making clear to the people you lead. And friend, speaking of biblical truth, there's nothing more important than filling your mind every day with truth from God's Word. A great help in that is the MacArthur Daily Bible. It takes you verse by verse through the entire Scripture in one year. To order your copy, contact us today. Call toll-free 855-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org. Each day the MacArthur Daily Bible gives you a portion of Scripture to read from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. Plus, it includes study notes from Jon to help you get more out of your time in God's Word. Again, to order the MacArthur Daily Bible for yourself or for someone you know, call 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org. And if you'd like to download all eight lessons from Jon's current study, The Bible-Driven Church, they're free of charge at gty.org. And in fact, all of Jon's sermons, over 3,500 of them, are available for free. So to listen to any of Jon's messages, go to gty.org. Now for Jon MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Keep in mind you can watch Grace To You television this Sunday on DIRECTV Channel 378, or check your local listings for Channel and Times, and be here tomorrow when Jon shows you practical ways you can bless and strengthen those who lead your church. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.