2006 Ligonier Conference: The Shepherd and the Flock

• text of scripture and see if we can’t take it apart a little bit in dealing with this subject of the pastor and his flock my problem with this text is this is where i have lived for the last 37 years as the pastor of grace community church i i think i’ll be there of course until the lord calls me home or i lose my mind and they shove me out of the pulpit have no plan to do anything different and it is more thrilling and more rewarding and more fulfilling now than it’s ever been but when you have been doing something for this long and shepherding the sheep and
• teaching the word of god to speak on this subject is a difficult thing because there’s far too much to say and trying to narrow it down to just one 50-minute message is a great challenge so i’m going to do what i feel so comfortable doing i’m going to take you to one text of scripture that i think will give us a broad understanding of this and it’s first timothy chapter four first timothy chapter four i want to start reading at verse six i’ll read the text and then we’ll look at it first timothy chapter four and verse six in pointing out these things to the
• brethren you will be a good servant of christ jesus constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following but have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women on the other hand discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness for bodily discipline is only of little profit but godliness is profitable for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come it is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance
• for it is for this we labor and strive because we have fixed our hope on the living god who is the savior of all men especially of believers prescribe and teach these things let no one look down on your youthfulness but rather in speech conduct love faith and purity show yourself an example of those who believe until i come give attention to the public reading of scripture to exhortation and teaching do not neglect the spiritual gift within you which was bestowed upon you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery
• take pains with these things be absorbed in them so that your progress may be evident to all pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching persevere in these things for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you a lot of imperatives in that text a lot of commands recently the 12-step programs have become very popular sort of started by alcoholics anonymous 12-step program for recovering alcoholics interestingly enough statistics seem to say that the rate of
• recovery among the people who are in the program is identical to the rate of recovery of people who are in no program it just seems that some people are able to overcome their habits but such programs have become very very popular and they’ve developed for a 100 other malfunctions and addictions they’ve even become very popular in churches you can find churches where there will be a long list of 12-step programs for almost every imaginable human difficulty and addiction there are those who believe the way to
• reach people is to target their addictions to target their malfunctions and go after them on that level many churches then have proliferated these kinds of programs and they continue to be very popular even increasing in their popularity however there may be uh among these churches and in many other churches who are not given over to such programs a very crucial malfunction at a very primary point we might for the sake of this message call it pastoral malfunction because it is true that many it seems to me have lost sight of
• what they are supposed to do and what they are supposed to be this is foundational as we said last night the lordship of christ the headship of christ is mediated in his church through his word explained applied and modeled by pastors there are pastors these days who seem strangely addicted to marketing and cultural relevance and politics and social reform and who knows what so what you have in this text is a 12-step program for recovering pastors and it is a text to which i have returned many times when i begin to slip into the malfunctioning zone