Father, this morning we are so thankful that we don’t have to wait until You come back to be in Your presence. Lord, we look forward to when You come back. And we look forward, Lord Jesus, to when You break through the heavens and all things are new are with You. But thank You that even now we have Your presence in the Spirit. Thank You that even now You are filling us up with Your love. You are even now showing us more of who You are through Your Word and through the ministry of the local church. That, God, You are keeping us for when what is good will be even better when You’re revealed at the end of time. So we say thank You for the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We thank You that we’re bound together in unity in the Spirit. And we ask, Lord, that You would open us to receive now Your Word, to, Lord, be confronted with the truth of Christ, and that our love and obedience would grow in that. We pray You’d bless, multiply, Lord, our Tyler offering, Lord, that we would gladly give, knowing that You work mightily through our obedience.

And, Lord, we pray all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, hey, good morning. It’s good to be with you.

We’re going to be in Hebrews chapter 13 this morning. I’d like to preach to you from Hebrews chapter 13, verses 7 and 17.

Hebrews 13, 7 and 17.

At the end of this letter, the Hebrew writer reminds them, he says, He says, remember your leaders.

Who spoke to you the Word of God.

Consider the outcome of their way of life.

And imitate their faith.

And imitate their faith. You’ve got to remember about the book of Hebrews. It’s a letter written to discourage believers. It’s a letter written to Christians. To use a modern saying, they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They’re all kind of looking inwardly. No one’s really pointing in the right direction. And whoever the Hebrew writer is, what he’s doing is he’s providing leadership. What he’s doing is saying, hey, stop going crazy and remember Jesus. This is the place we’re supposed to go. Here’s where we go. Here’s where we go. Here’s where we do. Here’s what matters. That’s what he’s doing in this church. And it’s a reminder of, certainly, most importantly in the local church, but in any given group or body of people, the critical importance of leadership. Of needing people to show the way and to point the way.

Dawson’s playing fall soccer again this season. And I like it. I like it because it’s not highly competitive. They practice for 30 minutes and they scrimmage each other for 30 minutes. And it’s fun to watch, but it’s just there for them to kind of figure out the basics. There’s no team leader. There’s no captain. There’s no strategy per se when they get out there. It’s just them learning and practicing in games what they learn. And that’s fun. And that’s good for them. But when you get up higher, more competitive levels, you’ve got to grow. And you will grow in that. And what it looks like to function as a team, to have leadership from a coach, from a team captain. So humans need leadership. Okay? It’s just a problem. And you see that problem, the vacuum of it in governments, in nations. You see it in any given organization when there’s not a clear leader saying, hey, this is why we exist. This is what we do. This is very much so a biblical concept. And I want you to see that this morning. If you would look in Judges chapter 2 with me,

Judges chapter 2.

Judges chapter 2. It says, And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years, and they buried him within the boundaries of the inheritance in Timnath-Herod, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

So we have the great leader Moses who leads them, out of Egypt. We have the great leader Moses who leads them in the 40 years wilderness experience. He literally delivers God’s word to them. He faithfully preaches. Moses does correction when they need it. He gives God’s direction, really not in just spiritual matters. You know, at that time it was a theocracy. So civil society, ceremonial practices in the temple, just common life. And then yes, in what it looks like to obey God from a moral, ethical, spiritual standpoint, Moses is the people’s leader speaking on behalf of God. And he’s a good leader. He’s a really good leader. And after Moses dies, you get Joshua. And Joshua actually leads the people into the promised land. And Moses and Joshua are great leaders. But there seems to be this massive deficit when Joshua and the elders of his time pass away because it says there comes this generation after them. And apparently no one’s teaching and preaching as it once was. There’s this lack of leadership saying, remember we’re God’s people. Remember what this looks like. And you have right after that kind of the famous cycle of judges. And that cycle is disobedience, slavery, repentance, brief obedience, disobedience, slavery, repentance, brief obedience, disobedience, back into slavery. And you have this horrible cycle happen over and over and over again. And then when we come to the kings, that era in ancient Israel’s history, you will read about one king and it says he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And what happens when that king does right in the eyes of the Lord? Well, it says the people do too. Things go well in the land. But that king dies. And then perhaps we’ll read of a king that says, and he did not do as his father did. He did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And what happens? The people, they follow the Baals and paganism and they start doing all they should not do. And so it’s this cycle of sometimes a good king, most of the time it’s a bad king. And whatever the king does, the people do. So the king is setting the spiritual tone for Israel at this point, just as much to the point where they’re wiped out because they’ve won too many evil kings and they stray so far, they’re lost to the Lord with the blessing they had. So the gift of leadership, I think, is inestimable.

But the gift of leadership, in the church, from a biblical standpoint as we consider it, it cannot be undervalued. It cannot be undervalued.

He says to them in verse 7, remember your leaders, the ones who spoke to you the word of God. And he does not mean make a mental note, like just acknowledge it, that it happened chronologically. It’s a state of things. Keep in mind is really what he’s saying. He’s saying, kind of live with an ongoing, constant, perpetual consciousness of these people who have preached the word of God to you. And keep it in mind to the point, it has an actual effect in bearing on your life. The ones who had authority, they were preaching to you. They were guides to you. Because here’s what’s very much so assumed by the Hebrew writer, and it’s what we looked at last week. The people who preach the word of God are those who practice the word of God and those who preach the word of God. The people who practice the word of God are the ones who speak the word of God. So he says, keep them in mind. Remember not just what they said to you, but he’s saying what? Consider the outcome of their way of life. Consider the outcome of their way of life.

It means inspect their way of life. He especially has in mind here the gift of those leaders who had finished the race, either through martyrdom, or old age. So maybe this is A.D. 70s. So by this point, someone’s been martyred. Someone knows someone who had been martyred. Someone knows someone who had been a Christian and passed away at this point. So the picture is almost a beautiful thing. Remember such and such who professed the faith. He walked the walk that he talked, and he finished the race. That very much so by way of memory is a gift to you to remember their life. He says, He says, And lastly, he says, Once you’ve done that, you should imitate their faith. You should mimic them. You should copy them. It’s why God gave them to you. It’s for the sake of your encouragement, your instruction. It’s for the good, the guidance of your own soul. That’s why God gives leaders. So I want you to think about this with me. What’s so wonderful about men called to serve as leaders? Leaders, pastor-elders, most particularly here, is simply this. They are not supermen. Rather, they’re common men. They’re simple men. Not doing super special things.

They’re just doing the regular things they should be doing for everyone to see. Now it’s true that the Lord gives certain gifts to pastor-elders to be able to teach and preach, and certainly gifts of grace, and grace of discernment and wisdom to lead. But at the end of the day, it defies the advice of the Bible to follow and mimic church leaders if they are on this spiritual playing field way above everybody else. Like they just float when they pray, and the Bible just makes sense automatically, and they have all these spiritual powers. Like that defies the advice of the Bible if we’re going to put church leaders on some unreachable pedestal. And it’s not true.

If we conceive of church leaders as those above the rest in terms of privilege and nearness to God, we have an unbiblical grasp of church leadership. I want you to look at 1 Timothy 3 with me. 1 Timothy 3. It says, The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer… Now as I read these, pick out the ones that overseers’ elders should be doing, but the rest of the church is exempt.

Above reproach. I’m pretty sure we should all be above reproach and not look like we’re giving way to sin in our lives or to compromising situations. The husband of one wife. The Bible commands everyone to be faithful in marriage. Sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard. Okay? The Bible would commend every Christian to obey all… All those things. Even able to teach. The Bible gives non-pastors the calling to, you know, in a brother-sister sense, teach, encourage, equip even. Not a drunkard. I’m not a pastor. I can get wasted. Not violent, but gentle. Not quarrelsome. Not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? You can’t go through that list. And say, oh, see, the Bible says this is only what leaders should look like and the rest of us are free from it. You could find those same arguments in different places in the Scripture that are commended to all. This is what all Christians should look like. So again, the calling of an elder pastor is not to say, let’s find these super special people that are running on a super special plane. It’s to say, let’s find the people who are committed to the normal business of church life. They’re committed to the normal, business of church life. I’m going to pick on Chase for a second. I didn’t tell him I was going to do it. But when Chase became an elder at the church that we came from, I remember he went through this season. He was like, I’m an elder now. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? And it was like, brother, nothing. The whole reason you became an elder is because we already saw in you the good stuff. Like, you don’t have to start, you know, flying and you don’t have to start, you know, shooting lasers out of your ears. Just be the guy you were. Like, that’s why you’re an elder is because you were already faithful to the calling. Like, there’s no greater thing. There’s nothing to do. To do.

So if anything, what we can say is there’s a greater burden that lies at the feet of church leadership to especially make the normal stuff of the Christian life plain in speech and conduct to help the church. So pastor elders are not professional Christians. Like, we tend to imagine that in our Western context at times. And here’s what it does when we put pastor elders on that kind of pedestal. Let me tell you what it does is it fosters laziness. Well, if the preachers and the elders are pros at evangelism, why in the world would I do it? You know, they really get the Bible. They got degrees and they studied stuff. What am I going to do with the Bible? I don’t need to wrestle with anything. And I bet they really know how to get in prayer. You know, and when it comes to discipleship, what do I know about helping somebody grow in Christ? That’s something for a pastor to do. And you end up seeing yourself as just somebody that should show up and throw money. Throw money at the pros and that’s your relationship with the church. And it’s terribly unbiblical. So we have to take Paul serious in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11 and 12. See what he says. He gave the apostles, he gave prophets, he gave evangelists, he gave shepherds, pastors, and teachers to do what? To do the work of the ministry? That’s not what it says. It says to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

That’s the work of the pastor elder. So is there a special word ministry on the part of the pastor elder? Yes. Does it grow up the church in mighty supernatural ways? Yes. To the end, the church is prepared to go do ministry and be the church to itself and out into the world. You know, the 90-10 rule, it exists in most churches. It’s a terrible rule. You know what the 90-10 rule is? This is 10% of the people in the church do the ministry and the 90 are kind enough to let the 10 do the work of the ministry in the church. It seems to be a rule kind of at play. So we don’t want the 90-10 rule. We want the 100% rule. That’s what we want. The gift of faith-filled leaders that they both speak and live to assist the whole body to Christian maturity and Christian ministry. You know, I don’t care how strong, how sharp, or how spiritual, or how godly, how effective any church has pastor-elders. They cannot be the husbands that the people in their congregation need to be to their wives. They cannot be the children or the father to the children that those children need. They can’t be the representative of Christ in their workplaces. They can’t do that. They can’t be the brother and sister that people need in the church. You know, God uniquely ordains a brother to come alongside a brother for a special season and that’s not going to be improved if only the pastor was the one walking with me for a season. That’s just not true in the least bit.

A brother and sister can care for you, I think, a lot of the times, better in physical and spiritual senses than a pastor can.

Life crises exist. Big stuff exists. Absolutely. Please call me at 2 o’clock in the morning. Life crisis. Call me anytime for anything that you need some kind of assistance. And I say it all the time and I truly mean it. But the reality is this. Life isn’t made up of like these crises and like I want to sit down with a pastor or I need this. And again, always feel free to reach out to pastor elders. A lot of times life is just made up of a bunch of little like there’s a temptation trial there. There’s this going on there. There’s this dry season there. That’s the kind of stuff that you really suffer if you don’t have brothers and sisters. Again, I bring up the 59-1 and others a lot because I think it’s so important. We should be in small p pastoring one another in just a normal run of life. That’s good. That’s the Bible’s plan for us to be doing that with one another. No team of pastors has the bandwidth to be that for everyone all the time. It’s just not possible.

So absolutely, pastors, elders, they have that calling to be a special spiritual presence in the life of the church. But the church has the calling to be the church in the life of its members. And that’s a good, good thing.

The command of the Hebrew writer consider deeply following them. Now, when he says that, it’s not because the Hebrew writer thinks that there are these people who have perfected the Christian life and if you could just imitate such and such, that would be the panacea of the Christian experience. He says it for the same reason Paul is happy to say over and over again, imitate me as I imitate Christ. He says it because of what? He’s following Christ. Paul never says just imitate me. Paul’s saying, hey, imitate me because by God’s grace, I actually have things present in my life that’s going to help you follow Jesus. That’s the only value and advantage when the Hebrew writer says imitate them. It’s because said person, by the grace of God, has in themselves the presence of Christ, they have done the normal stuff of getting up early and praying. They have done the thing of submitting themselves to the word. They’ve been discipled in relationships. They are hungry to grow. They’re hungry to do ministry, to reach the lost. So he’s not saying look at them. He’s saying look at the Christ in them and that will be to your benefit. That will be to your benefit. That’s the great value again when a pastor and an elder can be to church by God’s grace in which Christ is being replicated in everyone. And when everyone, everyone has Christ, we can replicate Christ all the more in one another and in the world.

Which also must mean pastor elders cannot live in an ivory tower. So much of pastoral ministry is teaching and preaching and it requires faithful, laborious study. It really does. And sometimes I love that. And sometimes I do it. You know? It’s just, it’s work. It’s good. It’s good, important work. But it’s hard work because we need to be setting before you week after week, Christ. Christ. You know, they always said in my preaching class, it’s a burden, but it’s a joyful burden. It’s like waves. Sunday comes every week. Every week it comes back. It comes back. And that’s just, it is truly a joyful burden to proclaim the Word of God and to teach the Scriptures. But there’s also, I think, a joy.

Having a very open life. And I think it’s required of pastoral elders. If Jesus’ model of ministry was, let me live with these guys. Let me just, you know, show them my life. If His ministry was show and tell, why in the world would my ministry not be show and tell as well? Why would my front door not be open all the time? Why would my life not be filled up with relationships? Why would I not be, or why would elders not be accessible to their people? So very much so, let pastors teach, teach and preach, but let them model and show with their life.

You know, it’s Pastor Appreciation Month. I don’t know who invented that. And I’m not dropping a line either.

But for Pastor Appreciation Month,

the pastor always, you know, he gets a lot of praise. He gets a lot of thank yous. And that’s wonderful. And, you know, I’ve always felt very loved, you know, by everyone at Providence. But by way of illustration, illustration of this point, I do want to recognize Chase this morning. And I want to say that I can think of no one else who has given their all to embody everything I’ve said, both in preaching the word of God unashamedly, having an open life, being ready, being available. And so I’m so grateful to God that he has given a lay elder here that deeply loves you and is ready to give his all for your sake. So, brother, I love you. And I’ve told him I couldn’t have made it this far as a pastor without him. He’s the friend and elder, you know, I don’t deserve. And so we’re all very grateful for your ministry and your sacrifice for all of us. So I want to say to you,

pray for your pastors and elders because they aren’t supermen and they deeply need to be refreshed in the spirit and they deeply need to be built up in Christ. They deeply need that. So pray for them. Pray for them. I want to also encourage you in this

to take a different, I want you to look at the same text from a different aspect and it’s this. Don’t have the mindset of plateauing. Like, I know this much and I’ve grown this much and here’s where I am. Because when we do that, we tend to say, you know, I’ve come pretty far along in the Christian life. I would probably be considered one of the more mature believers at my church. When we do that, we tend to not do the thing that we’re being encouraged to do and that’s fall. In other words, until you and I are dead, we constantly need to be in this frame of whatever I do know, I don’t know enough. And man, there’s always somebody there. There’s something there that the Holy Spirit is wanting to teach me. So I don’t care, you know, how much I know. I don’t care how much I compare to other people. I’m not like Jesus yet. So Jesus, give me one more mentor. Jesus, show me one more thing in the word of God. Jesus, give me one more great, wonderful book that’s going to help me see Christ more. Like, constantly live with a frame set of being disciples. As much as you should be discipled.

And then thirdly, I want to encourage you at the same time. Do you live with a culture of openness in your life? Do you live with a culture of openness? Jesus wouldn’t have had much of a ministry if he didn’t have openness. He would have, you know, come out from his green room and he would have preached to the crowds and gone away. But that’s not really a lot of what we read in the gospel. Or even in the epistles. We read of the apostles. We read of Jesus being with the people. We see them showing what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit of God. So is it a normal thing for you to have people in your home? Are you looking to have coffee with a brother or sister periodically to walk through a book of the Bible in different seasons of life? Are you just looking for avenues to disciple and build up and be built up by someone else? It’s a frame of mind to kind of live in.

Church leaders then are a gift, but it’s important if they’re going to be a gift we understand the work of church leaders.

We understand the work of church leaders. And here’s where I want you to look at verse 17 because he comes back to that same thought in 17. He says, Obey your leaders and submit to them

for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who have to give up. Give them an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning for that would be of no advantage to you.

So when he writes to this church of apparently Jewish Christians, because that’s basically the book of Hebrews, he’s building this very Jewish argument for why Jesus is the Christ, what he’s expecting on their part is not forced, you know, compliance. What he’s expecting is a willing, glad submission to their church leaders.

Here’s why. What the church leaders are teaching and preaching and expecting submission to is for the benefit of the church. And they need to see that. You know, we’re going to Mexico in a few days, a few of us, and I was talking to the missionary there, Archie. We were talking to him. We were talking to him a couple months ago and he told me a story about a little boy there, a little Mexican boy, and that Mexican boy had bleach blonde hair, if you could imagine that. And the reason he had bleach blonde hair is because his stomach was full of parasites and that was one of the side effects. But it took a lot of arguing and convincing this mother that, hey, we’re not the bad guys here. Like, she was very untrusting of these white missionaries. She didn’t know them. They had to really work with her to let them, to let them give this boy the medicine he needed to heal him. You see? So in the same way, when we come into the context of the local church, the pastor is not just that guy up there teaching and preaching stuff from which I may treat it like a buffet. I may or may not do this. It’s my Christian experience, you know, and I will determine what it looks like. That’s kind of a mindset we have in the Western church today. Rather, he says, no, you should submit willingly, gladly. Why? Because he’s saying the force of it is when he says submit and obey is you’re persuaded what they’re saying and showing to you is a good thing. It’s a good thing. They care about the spiritual welfare of you like a good doctor would care for the physical needs of a patient.

And he goes on to talk about really the heart of the pastor, the pastor-elder behind their work. He says, they’re keeping watch over your souls. They’re keeping watch over your souls. You know what that phrase means in the Greek? Sleepless.

Sleepless.

It means a perpetual state of doing it. They aren’t from time to time concerned with the spiritual welfare of the church. It’s their constant activity in all hours and seasons. You ever had the experience you go into a store and you look away for a second, and you look back and your kid’s gone? You’re like, what have I done? I’m the worst parent ever. They’ve gotten stolen. What am I going to do? Right? And it rushes through your mind. It’s like this thing. He’s teaching us here this thing that God gives the grace to pastor and elders to kind of have the church tucked into their hearts. It’s tucked into their mind. They’re concerned for them. They’re under their care. If you look in Acts chapter 20

when Paul is going away from the Ephesian church for the last time, he gives some final words to the elders. And this is what he says to them. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Pay careful attention to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples. After them. So Paul gives us this imagery in the local church of sheep and shepherds. Those who need to be constantly guarded and kept because there’s danger literally everywhere. So pastor, elders, they’re overseeing the truth that’s being proclaimed. Hey, are we teaching things to our people that accords with who Christ is? Is Christ being set forth? Is the Word of God being really preached? Hey, are we doing a good job? Are we doing a good job of defending our people from maybe truths that are floating out there and they’re really not to our benefit? Maybe the church at large is accepting it, but hey, that’s kind of a foreign idea. Are we talking about that? However, there are people trying to get into our church that they just seem unhealthy. We’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to pray about this. This person is bringing false truth. Hey, there’s this person inside the church and he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s something to be on the lookout for. And then we know even real and true sheep of the Lord, they need discipline and correction sometimes.

Christians, real Christians make real sinful choices sometimes.

There’s real relational brokenness between real Christians sometimes. There’s apathy. There’s carelessness. There’s spiritual anxiety and depression. There’s so much for the pastor or elder to be sleepless over.

So he must be teaching and preaching, but he must be counseling. He must be present with his people. He must, above all things, be on his knees pleading for the wisdom and power of God in all seasons. Whether it’s a good or bad one. Grace for what has been. Grace for what is. Grace for what is coming.

He has the joy of seeing new sheep coming to the fold. Eager to know Christ. Eager to be used. Eager to grow up. I think the pastor elder has the sorrow of seeing a sheep choose after much pleading to wander away and seem to never come back. He has the burden of commending aged, tried sheep to the Lord when they’ve run their race. And they’re going on to see the Lord for the first time. So the shepherd carries in his heart

Christ’s people. Not because he has enough love for them, but because he’s been given a love for them with the love of Christ. And it’s a special grace to the church.

He goes on to say this sleeplessness, the pastor elder is going to have to say, I have to give an account to God for it. He makes plain that the pastor elder will have to give an account to the Lord because the Lord will demand to know how well he did or did not care for them. Matthew Paul says this, How great by Christ’s law are the night watching and the day cares and the tears, the studies, the exhortations, the reproofs, comforts, the preaching, prayers, tears, strong cries to God for their souls. Will you pay duty to those who watch to preserve and protect your natural life and not unto those spiritual watchers who God has given them charge? And will God exact an account of them for your souls? They must render it at a dear rate. It isn’t their peril if they’re faithless and neglect their duty and your souls miscarry.

That’s a heavy thought.

It’s a heavy thought. Chris is thinking, never mind.

It’s a heavy thought.

But then he gives a command and I think this command is so important. He says, let them. In other words, it’s a command and we know commands can be obeyed or disobeyed, right? So it’s in the hands of the congregants the nature of the pastor-elder’s ministry.

And the command put to them is let them do it

with joy and not with groaning. In other words, it’s up to the church if the pastor-elder’s ministry in life is miserable. I think a great many pastors, elders, have never known the joy of ministry because they never had a church, a congregation of people that biblically understood the office of pastor-elder. It was a constant condescending. It was a constant fighting. It was a constant picking at. It was a constant distrusting. It was a constant talking behind the bar. It was a constant of others.

And what happens to that pastor is he becomes discouraged and he groans. Oh, the task of caring for Jesus’ people is too heavy. It’s so heavy. Not because he wanted it to be that way. He desired to do it at the start. He had love for Christ and His church and His soul. But the church refused it to him. Refused it to him.

For all the weightiness and gravity of being an elder, a shepherd, a pastor in a local church, God’s design is for it to be joy-filled. To be even a pleasure to the pastor. And here’s the thing. It’s to the church’s benefit. He goes on to say it’s of no advantage to you. So think about it. If you have a pastor-elder team

and man, they feel loved. They feel encouraged. The church is in agreement with them. Man, they’re submitting. It doesn’t mean there’s never problems. It doesn’t mean that everything is just perfect all the time. But by and large, the church understands the nature of gospel ministry. Well, that pastor-elder team, they’re going to do it with joy. They’re going to pour their life into it. And the quality of their ministry is going to be a way up here. But now on the flip,

if you have a pastor-elder team that feels beat down all the time and because of that, they’re just doing ministry to get by, to whose hurt is that besides the pastor’s? The church’s. In other words, you’re warring at your own soul when you take God’s tool that’s supposed to be used to help you and you break it. That’s what we do. Calvin says, we cannot be troublesome or disobedient to our pastors without hazarding our own salvation. Let us then remember that we are suffering the punishment of our own perverseness whenever the pastor grows cold in their duty or less diligent than they ought to be.

So does that mean that pastor-elders are infallible in the way that Catholics consider the Pope to be? Absolutely not. It doesn’t mean that. What it does mean, though, is this. God is good and kind in the normal run of life to give local churches pastors and elders who care for the needs of the souls of that church. And yes, I realize that the Bible’s not always obeyed correctly. And there are times when pastor-elders need to be removed or they just need to be unfollowed altogether. But, friends, the Hebrew writer doesn’t imagine churches everywhere paranoid like, I wonder if this dude’s fake. Hey, what if that’s not true? Like, I don’t know if I can trust you. He imagines a church that says, hey, God is good in the normal run of life to give us the pastors we need. God’s also good to show us when we don’t have the pastor that we need. That’s His kindness and the institution, the authority, the functions of the office of pastor and elder. Okay? So, I want to say

on that same diamond token, it is a joy to be your pastor. It’s a joy to be at Providence Fellowship. I wouldn’t trade Providence Fellowship for a church for a church of 5,000 with a ginormous paycheck

and notoriety and this and that because I truly believe we are a church and God has given us great unity. God has given us great clarity. The Spirit of Christ is here. You know, one thing that Chris and I were talking on the phone several months ago and he said, man, I just love Providence because I feel like it just feels like the early book of Acts. I just feel like we’re in Acts when they’re just together and they love one another. We’re just there. But that’s that’s so true. So I just want to say I love you and it’s a joy to pastor here and it’s a joy. I know it’s been a joy for Chase to do that as well here also. And I don’t take that lightly because it is it is so true. You could go find a million horror stories of churches that are controlled by families and we don’t like this pastor so we’re going to run him out of here and it’s a miserable ungodly experience.

But I do want to say on that token please take to heart sermons. If you’re like me and you grew up in the church sermons are something you hear because you know you go to church because you’re a Christian. But I want you to remember the pastor elder is called and Paul talks about this he says you know give that double honor especially to the one who preaches and teaches because it’s not a light work. It’s not a light work. It’s a heavy work because it’s the spirit of God doing more sanctifying work in you bringing you from where you are to where Christ is. So hearing Christ proclaim from the word week after week after week after week it’s a burden on my back a joyful burden but I know it’s worth it because I know when we show up and you have ears open to hear God is going to move and he’s going to work in you and he’s going to bring you closer to Jesus and you’re going to go out of these rooms out of these rooms more faithful to serve Jesus and you’re going to get closer and closer to heaven. Take that to heart what it means to hear the word of God

and know that the pastor elders of this church love you dearly and if we say hard things it’s because we love you and I think God in his grace gives perspective to pastor and elders on his people and even when things are tough it’s because we need to go where we need to go to get where we need to get together.

So again just to say I love you and it’s a blessing to do the work of ministry here.

Church leaders though can lead because they lead under Jesus.

Church leaders can lead because they lead under Jesus and I want you to see in 20 here what he rounds out the end of this letter with he says now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus and here it is it doesn’t say the shepherd the great shepherd of the sheep by the book of Acts the blood of the eternal covenant to equip you with everything good that you may do his will. In other words Jesus said what about who’s building this church? He said he was. Jesus said I will build my church. I will build my church. So how can it be that pastor elders could imagine themselves to be gifts and they actually be gifts to the local church? How could it be that sinful lowly men who are not supermen how could they do good work in helping people follow Jesus because it’s not about us or a power it’s about Jesus who said I will build my church and that means Jesus will do that thing that he always does he will take weak vessels that are willing by grace and he will use them for an eternal kingdom impact. That’s how.

So friends let pastors and elders be called the chief servants. Let them be called the ones who are waiting on Jesus and say Jesus how can I attend to your flock here? What does that look like? This is your church. You are the, the ruler of it. You’re the king of it and we are here to do your bidding. What would you have us do? How would you have us lead your church? So church leaders are under Jesus and that makes their leadership valid and useful for your own soul.

I want to finish by reading this this bit from a Charles Spurgeon sermon and I read this years and years ago and it stuck with me and I just thought it’s just such a wonderful just little grab at what gospel ministry is. He says it’s quite right to work as if the salvation of all the souls in the world depend upon you yet as it does not you’d better throw that burden back upon your Lord Jesus the Master.

Feel the weight of men’s souls till it crushes you down to Christ’s feet but do not let it crush you any lower than that. You are not the Savior. You are not to have the glory of their salvation. Neither if you have served your Lord faithfully shall you have the shame of their ruin if they are lost. Rise not up early and sit not up late. I mean so as to work yourself away but give yourself up by faith to do all you can all that God shall help you to do and then trust Him to bless you and He will bless you. God make this discourse a word of comfort to His own people for Christ’s sake. Amen.