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Acts 20:17-38
17 Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. 18 And when they came to him, he said to them:
“You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, 19 serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; 20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, 21 testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.1 22 And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by2 the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, 23 except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. 24 But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. 25 And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. 26 Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. 28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God,3 which he obtained with his own blood.4 29 I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. 31 Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. 32 And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. 34 You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. 35 In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
36 And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. 37 And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, 38 being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship.
[1] 20:21
[2] 20:22
[3] 20:28
[4] 20:28
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you would turn with me in your bibles to the 20th chapter of acts. We will start in verse 17. Excuse me. While you're turning there, I'm Thomas, I'm an elder here. I'm not much of a preacher so bear with me tonight.
Caleb Chancey:Feel like God's got an important word for us. And if it is garbled in the giving, may it still be heard by the power of his spirit. So with that assurance, let's go to God's word. Acts 20 verse 17 to the end of the chapter. Now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him.
Caleb Chancey:And when they came, he said to them, you yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility, and with tears, and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews. How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, I'm going to Jerusalem constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.
Caleb Chancey:Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, 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. Therefore, be alert, remembering that for 3 years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears.
Caleb Chancey:And now, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who are with me. In all things, I've shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them.
Caleb Chancey:And there was much weeping on the part of all. They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship. Pray with me. God, please open your word to us.
Caleb Chancey:I pray that your word would be thick in the room, that it would fill our ears, that it would taste, sweet, in our mouths. And even if it doesn't, even if it's bitter, in the eating, that it would be good for us, that it would nourish our souls. That is your work and not my work. It is not, me that anyone came to hear, but you. And we have faith that you will speak all to to all of us, that you will instruct us.
Caleb Chancey:God, I pray that your word would go forth, and that my words would be forgotten. May you accomplish this for the sake of your son, Christ. In his name we pray. Amen. This text, hopefully is familiar to you because Joel preached about it.
Caleb Chancey:I don't know it too. My hands, I'm I'm awkward. Joel preached about it, April 1st last year. April 1st 2012 is a great sermon, one that you should go back and listen to. The podcast is still online.
Caleb Chancey:I listened to it yesterday, so that I wouldn't repeat the things that he said. My sermon tonight's about eldership. It's about shepherding. And, the purpose of this message is, I think, threefold. A lot of you are new, and it might be interesting for you to know that Redeemer is an elder led church, and we should figure out what that means.
Caleb Chancey:Also, many of you got an email this week. The members got an email from Joel this week talking about how we're appointing new elders. And at the time of appointing new elders, it's good to reflect on the calling of an elder. And so part of my sermon tonight is a charge to myself as an elder and to the other elders that are here. But most of all, the the purpose of preaching and of preaching about eldership isn't to give a how to or to give an explanation, but to exalt the name and the person of Christ who, we see how eldership points to him.
Caleb Chancey:It's only possible because of him, and is ultimately an act of worship to him. He is our great shepherd. So I'm not really gonna talk about the qualifications for elder. You can find those, 2nd Timothy and then Titus, in particular. The most remarkable thing about those qualifications is they're not very remarkable at all.
Caleb Chancey:They basically say that an elder is to live a life of holiness, like all believers are supposed to. They do say that elders are supposed to teach, but other than that, they're pretty much the same as the call that goes forth to everybody. The heart of eldership is not in the qualifications. I think instead, we'll find the heart of eldership in what Paul was talking about when he charged the Ephesian elders. But first, before we jump into that, I wanna define some terms.
Caleb Chancey:I'm gonna set some context. To define terms, you might be curious to know, elder comes from the Greek word presbuteros, where we get Presbyterian from. Obviously, Presbyterians name themselves after the elder form of government. Elders play a major role in that denomination. We see the word elder pop up a lot in the new testament, both referring to Christian elders and referring to elders in a city or or Jewish elders in the gospels.
Caleb Chancey:Another common word that's used for the same office is episkopos, where we get episcopalian from. It literally means overseer. Some some of your Bibles might transword translate that word bishop. It's just as valid a translation. And the third word that's used to describe the office that I'm talking about is that of pastor, which literally means shepherd.
Caleb Chancey:Now these three offices are interchangeable. They're not distinct. They're three names for the same office. And one more introductory point to make is that everywhere in the New Testament that you see these offices described, unless it's explicitly talking about one person as a group of elders, elders is always plural. Every church that's governed by elders is governed by multiple elders.
Caleb Chancey:We saw in verse 17 that we just read, Paul's addressing elders, plural. In Titus 15, he instructs Titus to appoint elders, plural, in every town. And Peter, in in first Peter 51, exhorts the elder elders amongst you, not the singular elder amongst you. There's a normative statement here that there should always be more than 1 elder in the church. We should never count on 1 person.
Caleb Chancey:So with those terms defined, let's set the context for Paul's sermon as as you may recall from Joel's message, a year ago. This is the only recorded sermon of Paul that we have that Paul gave to believers. He's speaking to the Ephesian elders, and he's doing so on he's on a journey. He's leaving a missionary journey, and he's returning to Jerusalem. And just like Jesus set his eyes to Jerusalem and went there to die, Paul is going to Jerusalem, he thinks, to die.
Caleb Chancey:And he's he's right, although it's gonna take a long time and a much longer journey after this. He feels compelled by the spirit, constrained to go to Jerusalem, and he knows that this is the end for him. He's about to lose his freedom. So the town that he stops in is called Miletus. It's a town on the ocean.
Caleb Chancey:Paul's traveling by boat, and it's about a day's journey away from Ephesus. So he sends for the Ephesian elders, and it probably took a day or 2 or 3 for everybody to get there. So, Paul is giving a prepared sermon. This isn't he didn't like hop off the boat, spout off some words, hug everybody, jump back on the boat. This is carefully constructed.
Caleb Chancey:He's put this together to make a point. And I think his point is this, he's wanna hold he's holding himself out as an example of what elders should do and how they govern and serve the church. About these Ephesian elders, Paul spent 3 years at ministering in Ephesus. It's a city where he encountered a lot of, opposition. He got beat up.
Caleb Chancey:It was there were riots, and he he worked hard while he was there. So he would have gone through a lot with these elders. He may have been there for the conversion of many of them. He may have singled them out as people who would be good elders one day. Paul's intimately connected with these guys.
Caleb Chancey:He knows them well and has suffered with them. He's probably also argued with them, given the kind of guy that Paul was. And now he's giving them his last words. This is the last time he thinks he's ever gonna see him, and so he's carefully composed his last charge to them. And that last charge lays out 3 broad rules for elders.
Caleb Chancey:1st, identification. 2nd, teaching. 3rd, shepherding. And we're gonna look at these these three different functions. That's kinda the the bulk of my sermon.
Caleb Chancey:But I wanna start off with what's not on the list, because I think a lot of us, when we hear about elders, we think about church leadership generally. We would add a 4th office on there. We would say, oh, yeah. Executive. You gotta you gotta be able to run an organization.
Caleb Chancey:You gotta be efficient. You gotta be a good leader. That's not on the list, and I think it's a mission. It's very purposeful. A part of the job of an elder is to run the church.
Caleb Chancey:There is a management function, but it is the lowest, and it is the least important function, and it is the one that must flow from the others if we're going to be a a Christian organization. We're not called to professional management. We're called to sacrificial servant leadership. If I might kinda tease this out in a concrete example, Joel mentioned earlier that we've got a lot of kids coming to church. We also have a lot of adults coming to church.
Caleb Chancey:This room is getting full. We, tonight's not as not as full as other nights have been. There have been times that we've just about run out of space in here, and it came up at our last elders meeting. What are we gonna do? Where where are we gonna put everybody when the room fills up?
Caleb Chancey:What are we what's our plan? And we talked about that for about 2 minutes. And then we said, you know, we'll count chairs later. And we got on with what we consider to be the bulk, the most important thing of our work, which is sharing the needs in the congregation, praying for people, giving updates about people who've been struggling and that who need help, and sharing praises for where God has worked. That's the substance of what we do.
Caleb Chancey:That's not kind of an optional side task, once we've figured out how we're gonna manage the church. That is the work of eldership. God primarily calls elders to care for the church, not to management not to manage it. Or if I was gonna put that another way, I'd say that if we're too busy for our shepherding tasks, then we're already too big, and we've already run out of room. Shepherding a church is much more than providing enough chairs.
Caleb Chancey:That's why we're appointing new elders. The church has grown. We've we've grown a lot in the last couple of years, and we've have grown to feel that we can't faithfully discharge the obligations of an elder relationally anymore. There's just 6 of us, and it's not enough to get to know everybody and to discharge our duties according to what I'm about to talk to you about. So with that, kind of that background and that view of what we need, let's look at Paul, and the substance of his speech in these three roles of eldership.
Caleb Chancey:Paul begins with identification. Now the first thing that he says to the Ephesian elders is, you know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia. At first, this seems to be extremely unremarkable. Paul says, I came to Ephesus, and I lived with the Ephesians. Remember that Paul is being intentional here.
Caleb Chancey:He he's prepared this this sermon with with a plan in mind, and he's starting with the most the the foundational point, which is an elder must identify with the people that he's going to serve. That the all of the tasks, all the functions, all the jobs of an elder don't rest on a foundation of ignorance, but on a foundation of personal knowledge. We all have to we have to know one another. An elder must be acquainted with the church and with its needs personally. This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls life together.
Caleb Chancey:And it's actually a pretty radical point. I mean, it seems obvious, but I think it's radical. We live very isolated lives, or at least we have the capacity to. It's very easy for us to withdraw into an electronic life, or into just working, or or or just having the one thing that we do that's highly specialized. We don't have to get to know a lot of people, and the people that we know, we don't have to know in every facet of their life.
Caleb Chancey:I think the call to eldership, to church membership, is to get to know all of people. To get to know them slowly, and intentionally, and and deeply. To make friends, to open up your house, to share meals together. This takes time, and it takes a lot of effort. Paul stayed in Ephesus for years.
Caleb Chancey:It wasn't like there were there were no other places that needed to hear the gospel. The gospel had never been shared before, and yet, Paul stayed in Ephesus for multiple years, for 3 years. He did that so that he could get to know people deeply, and be able to apply the gospel to their lives directly and profitably. This is hard work. You'll notice in verse 19 that Paul says this identification process took place through tears and trials and with humility.
Caleb Chancey:Now the particular hardships that he suffered, the plots of the Jews, is not something that we deal with now, but I don't think that's that particular context is limiting. Instead, Paul's lesson is more general. He said, the work of identification is hard work because it means suffering and inconvenience. It takes time to get to know people. It takes it's difficult to get to know people.
Caleb Chancey:People aren't always pleasant, and we see, that people have problems. And what Paul is saying is that an elder has to identify so identify with the congregation that the the the problems of the congregation are personal to the elder. It would have been easy, for example, for Paul to say to the Ephesians, hey, y'all have lots of riots here in Ephesus. I don't particularly like being beat up, and I'm gonna go somewhere else where they're not having riots and threatening my life. But he did and he stuck it out.
Caleb Chancey:He invested with them. He said, no, this this dissension, this this opposition in emphasis, that is not my problem. I'm going to make my problem by identifying with you. And I think that that's very important for elders today, to identify with the problems that are facing the congregation, to take them on as our own, to feel the weight of them. Then, out of identification flows the second function of eldership, which is teaching.
Caleb Chancey:Paul says that he taught the Ephesians, and he gives 3 a kind of 3 axes on which you can measure his teaching. He says where he taught, he says who he taught, and what he taught. Where, he taught in public, and from house to house. I think both of those are terms of art. Teaching in public in the Hellenic world, the audience that Paul was talking to, means that he was, teaching in he was he was engaging with the leading lights of the city.
Caleb Chancey:Back in, in this kind of post, this kind of early Roman empire, you had a lot of people called sophists that would go from town to town, and they would argue, and it was a form of entertainment. They would they would get up in front of the people, and they would argue a certain point, and then maybe they'd turn around and argue the opposite point. People would come out and listen to this. It was it was fun, I guess. It's it's kinda like watching, cable TV shows today, or cable news, where people get up and just yap back and forth at each other.
Caleb Chancey:That was, that was a form of entertainment. We still do it. I guess we're not that different. Saint Paul went out in these public places. So he's not just standing on some street corner, hollering the gospel at the wind, or at people as they're walking by.
Caleb Chancey:He is intentionally engaging with folks who are educated, who are trying to influence the intellectual life of the city, and he's saying, I'm I put the gospel in front of those people. I I engage the problems of the public life of the day, and I I put forth the gospel as a solution. We see an example of that if you flip back to to chapter 19. It says that Paul spent, spent months at an Ephesian synagogue arguing. And when he was finally opposed there so much that he had to leave, he went to a a different hall, the hall of this guy named Tyrannus, and he argued there for so long that he says, everyone in Asia came to hear the gospel.
Caleb Chancey:So he he is out there talking a lot for a long time. But he's not just doing that. He's he's preaching in public, but he's also teaching from house to house. Now he doesn't mean, I don't think, that he's being a Jehovah's Witness knocking on one door, talk to that person, go to the next door, knock on that door. No.
Caleb Chancey:I I think house to house is where the church was meeting. The church would would gather in people's homes, and Paul was out of having identified with these people. He knew what was going on with them, and he was discipling them, individually and in small groups. I think that's what he means when he says that I declared to you everything that was profitable. He knew what was going on with them, so he was able to say, here's how the gospel applies to this particular problem that you've got in your life.
Caleb Chancey:Now remember that Paul is an apostle. He's he's seen the risen Christ. He wrote most or a a very good chunk of that new testament. This was a guy with incredible gifting, incredible knowledge, and he's spending his time teaching people, 1 on 1, maybe helping them wrestle with their doubts about the resurrection, maybe helping them in their marriage or their drinking problem, maybe arguing with Jews about, you know, how to apply the the the how much of the law survives the gospel, Trying to evangelize people who didn't believe or who had doubts. He's doing all this work, instead of directly instead of, say, writing Romans 2.
Caleb Chancey:Instead of giving us new books in our new testament, that we would still be holding today and studying. That's a big deal. It is very crucial for us to recognize that Paul, with this incredible gifting, still viewed a primary part of his job as an apostle as an apostle, to be teaching individually, working on discipleship. If if you look up in chapter 20, it tells the story of Paul teaching in Troas all night long the night before he leaves. He's so intent on teaching everybody that about midnight, somebody falls asleep who was sitting in a window, and they fell 3 stories and died, hit the ground and died.
Caleb Chancey:Paul goes down, embraces the man, he comes back to life. They go back up to the 3rd floor, they break bread together, and Paul keeps teaching them until daybreak. Paul is passionately committed to individual discipleship, despite his high position. And I think, for the elders amongst us, that's a powerful charge. We never ever outgrow the call to personal and individual discipleship.
Caleb Chancey:It is a crucial part of, of our function. K. So that's where Paul taught. Now, who did he teach? Paul said he taught both Jews and Greeks.
Caleb Chancey:I'm not gonna dwell on all the ways that Jews and Greeks were different, but they were very different. They were different races. They had different religions. They had different views of culture, of government, of law, of of salvation, everything. They are polar opposites, and they didn't get along very well.
Caleb Chancey:I imagine if we think a little bit, we could identify some of those similar divides that run through our culture today. But those are the people who were in Ephesus, and those are the people to whom Paul brought the gospel. He had to be flexible. He had to work with people who weren't like him. He had to try to identify with them.
Caleb Chancey:It's best he knew how. And I think that that's it's a challenge to the American church, and it's a challenge to us, in this building, in this neighborhood. But it's tempting to think that Paul would change his message depending on who he was talking to. But that's not what he says. Look at what he taught.
Caleb Chancey:He says, I taught repentance to God and a faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. He taught the gospel. I encourage you to take time this week to read Ephesians 23, and and read about the gospel that Paul proclaimed to the Ephesians. To read about how he starts with you were dead in your in your trespasses and sins, but God who is rich in mercy brought you to life. And, it carries through this wonderful explication for the joy and mystery of the gospel.
Caleb Chancey:And it ends with this prayer that the Ephesians would be strengthened to know it in their inmost being. And then this he just breaks out in this hymn to Jesus Christ. I mean, this man loved the gospel. He was filled with it, and it was his fervent desire to preach that one message to everybody in every form that he could find himself in. The same holds for us today.
Caleb Chancey:From you who have never believed in Christ, to those of you who have loved and trusted Christ longer than I have been alive, there's one message that we need to hear, is that Christ died for our sins, and yet he lives, that we might live a life of repentance. This message of the gospel, this core foundational message, it works from the pulpit, and it works on the front porch. And it really takes both places to teach it well. We need to hear the gospel proclaimed like this, and we need to wrestle with it also in conversation and in application. If it's just preached to us and never applied, we never work it out together, then we risk being fruitless and mere intellectual believers.
Caleb Chancey:And yet, if we focus only on application, and we forget to consider the gospel as the foundational truth on which the entire world is built, we're likely to drift from sound teaching, and we'll end up in some powerless message of I don't know, personal improvement or social justice. It takes both facets of teaching, both form of teaching the gospel, in order for us to get to capture the fullness of what it means for us. To try with just one is like clapping with one hand, it's just not gonna work. There's a there's a kind of a 4th aspect to the teaching role, and that is that an elder has to be a teacher and anchor of sound doctrine. It's our job to learn the Bible, and to apply it accurately in circumstances inside and outside the church.
Caleb Chancey:Where did I put my Bible's right here. Look in verse 29 with me. 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. You see, Paul says, there's gonna be outside influences that will attack the church.
Caleb Chancey:Outside doctrines, Paul was likely also talking about real physical persecution. Said, you're gonna need to care for the church in in those circumstances. But he also says, you yourselves are not above falling away from the truth of the gospel. So be on your guard, cling to sound doctrine, even if it requires challenging other elders who've fallen away from it. That brings the end of teaching, and it's also the easy part of my sermon, because now we get to the really hard part.
Caleb Chancey:Paul's most difficult sentences begin in verse 25. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom, will see my face again. I want you to put yourself in in the the elder's shoes here and and hear someone say this to you, hey, I'm about to die, and you're never going to see me again. You only say that if the next thing that you say is the most important thing that you've ever wanted to say to somebody. He is amplifying what he's about to say.
Caleb Chancey:And that's verse 26 and 27. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. I'm innocent of the blood of all of you. That is extremely sobering to me. And what's he talking about?
Caleb Chancey:It's as if he's saying, if you die, that's your problem. That's on you. That's not on me. I've discharged my duty. And I think that is exactly what he's saying.
Caleb Chancey:If you engage with me for a minute, flip back to Ezekiel 33. You could also look at Ezekiel chapter 3 for further study, but we'll go with chapter 33. We're actually gonna be in Ezekiel for a few minutes, a couple times tonight, so don't lose your page. I'm gonna read the first six verses of Ezekiel 33 and see if you can hear all this applies to what Paul was saying when he's innocent of the blood of all of of all of you. The word of the Lord came to me.
Caleb Chancey:Son of man, speak to your people and say to them, if I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them and make him their watchmen, if the people of the land take and make themselves a watchmen, and if he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, and if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be on his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet and didn't take warning. His blood shall be on himself. But if he had taken the warning, he would have saved his life. But, if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so so the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes away any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman's hand.
Caleb Chancey:Paul is saying that he's that watchman and that he's blown the trumpet. And to these Ephesian elders, if if you don't heed if you don't heed the full counsel of God that I've given to you, that's on you. It's not on me, Paul says. I don't know if that's heavy to you, but it falls very heavy on me. I can't imagine ever being able to say that with the confidence that Paul has.
Caleb Chancey:And I have to kinda particularly charge the elders out here. Is that something that you think you will ever be able to say? And if not, does that mean that we're not innocent of the blood of those that fall away? I mean, Paul's being very confrontational here. He's asking a very difficult question.
Caleb Chancey:And he's asking it in a context, that it would not be common to ask a very difficult question. This is a farewell speech. I mean, at the end, he's here he's giving hugs and kisses to all these guys. These are close friends of his. And he's telling them, if you do not faithfully discharge your duties, you're basically going to die.
Caleb Chancey:Now, we'll see later. I think he's being, he's using analogy and perhaps a bit of exaggeration here. But that's exactly literally what the scripture says. And that should be very sobering to us. I think it also it it pulls us into this third function of elders, which is the function of the shepherd.
Caleb Chancey:Let's pick back pick back up. So once once Paul says that he's he's innocent of the blood of the Ephesian elders because he did not shrink from declaring to them the whole counsel of God, he picks up in verse 28. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. Paul is analogizing the church to a flock of sheep and he says that the elders are shepherds appointed in that flock by the holy spirit. The emphasis here is that the church belongs to god, and that he has purchased it at a very high price.
Caleb Chancey:In fact, he's laid down his own life for it, which is the highest price that anything can ever be paid for anything. God himself, who made the world, gave his life for the church. If that's not enough to make you slow down, I think Luke is also being intentional about using this direct language here, including it here. I'm sure that Paul talked about the the direct sacrificial atoning work of Christ more than just once in all of his sermons, But if you read through all of Luke's writing, his gospel, and again in Acts, you'll only see Luke bring up this direct atoning work twice. He does it in the institution of the Lord's supper where Jesus says, this is my body broken for you.
Caleb Chancey:He does it here in talking about God purchasing the church for himself. He's emphasizing the price that God paid for the church, and its immense value to him. And this emphasis on God's sacrificial atoning work is the central point of Paul's message. He's challenging elders to lead sacrificially as a shepherd. Shepherds the pea as a as Christ himself is the great shepherd of the church.
Caleb Chancey:Let's oversee. Let's sorry, let's see, not oversee. Ezekiel 34. Let's flip over one chapter we were. I'm gonna start in verse 7 and read to verse 10.
Caleb Chancey:Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the lord. As I live, declares the lord god, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beast. And since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, If not fed my sheep. Therefore, you shepherds hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep.
Caleb Chancey:No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them. God views the church as his own, and he is passionately committed to the good of the church. The individual members of the church, He calls them my sheep, and he is committed to their welfare. And he says that he is against the shepherds that do not view the church the same way that he does, as precious as he does.
Caleb Chancey:We are, as elders, charged to love and care for the church with the same degree of sacrifice as Christ loves and cares for the church. And that takes sacrifice. Paul says so. If you look in verse 33, it says, he didn't covet anyone's silver or gold or clothes. In verse 34, he says that he he worked.
Caleb Chancey:He he paid for his own necessities, although it would have been within his rights to say, hey guys, can you give me a little something here? I'm spending all my time preaching. No. He worked, and he didn't just pay for his own stuff, he paid for those of the people that were with him. This guy is pouring out his life, and making sacrifices that he doesn't have to, to say nothing of the fact that he's getting beaten up, and charged in riots, and dragged before magistrates.
Caleb Chancey:This guy is suffering on behalf of the church, and he's doing it because he loves the church, because the call of God to an elder is to lay down your life for the church. And that that's the charge I've gotta give to the elders here. We testify to God's work and salvation when we take on hardship for the sake of the church. Let us not grow weary of it. God gave his life for this flock, and any loss or hardship, or inconvenience, or frustration that we incur are literally nothing in comparison.
Caleb Chancey:Our suffering could never measure against that of the God that we follow. And he gave up everything for this flock. Let us do likewise. I'm not gonna stop there because I can't stop there, because that's a hopeless message. Now, me pouring out my life is worth really nothing to any of you.
Caleb Chancey:I don't think it would do any good. And even if all of us did, we're still not enough. We're not smart enough. We're not good enough. We would probably back off at the last minute anyway.
Caleb Chancey:You shouldn't put your hope in men. An elder shouldn't put his hope in himself. You're going to fail. An elder's work does not spring out of the necessity of the church's salvation. It brings an elder's work springs out of the assurance that the church is saved in the finished work of Christ.
Caleb Chancey:An elder is free to give, all of us are free to give, because our blood literally does not depend on it. Did you notice the subtlety of Paul in verse 28, when he said that you are overseers in the flock? Not an overseer over the flock or from outside the flock. He's saying, look you're a sheep. You're part of the flock.
Caleb Chancey:You're not you're not external from the flock such that you're like some mediator between God and man. That's not the case at all. An elder doesn't stand between God and man. An elder doesn't have any saving work to do. As we see I'm gonna show in a second, we have a work in in continuing the work of Christ.
Caleb Chancey:It's showing the fullness of the work of Christ, not accomplishing it ourselves. We, all of us, trust in the work of Christ. Let's go back to see this, to Ezekiel 34. So we we saw the prophecy of the Lord against the shepherds. Now we go down to verse 11.
Caleb Chancey:For thus says the lord God, behold I I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. Skip down to verse 15, I myself will be the shepherd of my of my sheep, and I, myself, will make them lie down, declares the lord. And one last place in verse 23. And I will set up over them 1 shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them. Yes.
Caleb Chancey:He shall feed them and be their shepherd. God himself will be our shepherd. We don't trust in the work of man. We don't we don't work out of the hope that at the end of the day, it's going to be enough. No.
Caleb Chancey:We work out of the assurance that god will take care of his church, that god himself will be the shepherd, that god himself will accomplish the protection, the feeding, and and the justification of his flock. And if there were any doubt about this, I mean, consider that Christ takes on himself the role of of the great shepherd in John 10. It's another place for you to read this week if interested in further study. We don't have time to read the whole thing now. But Jesus is the one that calls us.
Caleb Chancey:Jesus is the one that saves us. He's the one that lays down his life for us, and his life is worth something. His blood saves us, once and for all. In fact, Jesus doesn't just fulfill the shepherding role. We've looked at these three roles of elder identifying, teaching, and shepherding.
Caleb Chancey:Jesus is most clearly our shepherd, but look, He also identifies with us. I mean, an elder needs to take on the the pain of the church such that it's his own pain, but Christ took on flesh that he might be like us. He came from perfection and identified with us in our weakness. And it it might be a big deal that Paul taught in public places, but Jesus argued in the synagogues and spoke incredible words. He cleansed the temple, and said that his house would be a house of prayer.
Caleb Chancey:And it might be a big deal that Paul went from house to house when he could have been writing the New Testament, but God Himself spoke tenderly to Nicodemus and reasoned with him. God himself called Zacchaeus down from a tree to share a meal with him. God himself healed old blind man Bartimaeus on the road to Jerusalem. God himself spent poured out his brief time on earth with small groups of sinners and misfits. He's modeled for us individual teaching discipleship and training, and I I think that example is just overwhelmingly powerful.
Caleb Chancey:We are not called to abstractions or organizations, but to individuals. And where all human shepherds will fail in this third and ultimate role of an elder, that is shepherding. Where we fail, and fail we will, we have a good shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep. What drives an elder's work is thankfulness to Jesus. And and Paul says as much in verses 18 and 19.
Caleb Chancey:He says that he was serving the lord in Ephesus. He wasn't doing this out of, you know, his profound sense of the needs of the Ephesians or because he thought they were particularly good people. He was serving the lord there. He took on he took on the problems of the Ephesians because Christ had taken on his problems. He identified with them because Christ identified with him first.
Caleb Chancey:And his hope for the Ephesians is not that the elders would grow up and be great men of God after Paul, but rather as he says when he commends them, he says, I Now, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace that is able to hold you, build you up, and to give you an inheritance among those who are sanctified. In other words, an elder is free to give. The church can give and show that it is better to give than receive because we have a boundless inheritance with Christ. Any giving, any sacrifice, any pain and loss that we incur is a testimony to this efficiency of Christ. I'm gonna end with 2 quick points of application, and these are for the whole congregation, not just the elders.
Caleb Chancey:First, please pray for the elders and for our families. The job that I've outlined is literally impossible. It's literally impossible. It cannot be done, and it is this office can only be discharged through the sustaining work of the Holy Spirit, and the grace that Christ can give to us. Remember, an elder is still a sheep, prone to wander, subject and susceptible to temptation.
Caleb Chancey:If you've been around church any amount of time, you have seen with your own eyes the disproportionate impact that sin in the life of an elder or church leader has on the congregation. Pray for our for that the elders would resist temptation. We would study the word. You know, we would be faithful to the calling that God's given us, and that he would give us the strength to be so faithful. It's a high calling, and it's a frankly, an overwhelming one.
Caleb Chancey:2nd, this is again is for all of us. Remember that life in church is an act of worship for Christ. When we serve one another, we testify to his work. All of us all of us should be ready to give to one another, even when you feel you've got nothing to spare. The call of the gospel to all of us is to trust Christ so much that we allow suffering to come.
Caleb Chancey:We let it come on us when it can help others. An elder has this call particularly, but it goes out to all. If Christ is worth everything to you, if you believe that you are co heirs of kingdom of God with Christ, then joyfully show an unbelieving world that you would rather have Christ than money or comfort. Show with Paul, as he says, that you do not account your life of any value or as precious to yourself, if only you may finish your course in the ministry that you receive from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. Pray with me.
Caleb Chancey:God, thank you for your word. Thank you for its truth. Thank you that it doesn't change. It is a light and a lamp to us. May we be guided by that word, and not just guided, god, but filled and and delighted with it.
Caleb Chancey:I pray that you will take this word, and that you will shape our church with it. That you will make all of us, elders and not students of the word, and that we will always come to your word and challenge what is said. God, I pray that you that you fill us, all of us, particularly the elders, the heart to serve, to identify, be prepared to teach in all in all circumstances, and to welcome suffering when it comes, not to seek it out, to gratuitously, suffer and and puff ourselves up. But, god, we have had an easy go of the of the first 5 years of this church. It's been challenging.
Caleb Chancey:But, god, when when testing comes, when the time for suffering comes, I pray that we will, and we'll be faithful, and that we will know we will know it's better to give than receive. Christ, our hope is in you. It's in your worth, in your beauty, in your in your sufficiency, not in the work of any men. I pray that you will fill our hearts with a delight in you, expresses itself through service in the church, in the world. Remind us all of your gospel.
Caleb Chancey:Write it on our hearts. Thank you for this word in Christ's name. Amen.