Reforming the church is embracing God's gift of pastors part 2

2 Timothy 4:1-2

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

Did you ever notice how strong Paul's language is here to young pastor Timothy?

This is no request or suggestion. This is a charge. Not just any charge, Paul adds extra emphasis with "solemn charge."

In Greek, this carries the idea of a "severe warning." A warning that carries a great cost to himself and his ministry if he fails to carry out this charge. Because this charge is not simply from the apostle Paul, it is from Christ Himself.

The charge is to preach Christ to His church and nothing less than Christ.
Earlier in this same letter the apostle Paul reminds Timothy where this charge originates:
2 Timothy 1:14
Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you...This treasure is a two fold treasure: the treasure of the Word of God itself and the calling to preach it. This is the treasure that Christ Himself has entrusted to Timothy.


2 Timothy 1:6
For this reason I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands...
First Christ gave Timothy the gift to preach the Word of God, which is the same as calling him as an elder and pastor and then He gave Timothy as a gift to the church, so that they could benefit from Word of God and the ministry that Christ called Timothy into.


Why did Christ charge Timothy to preach the Word to the church and to "guard this treasure, which has been entrusted to him?"


Why is the apostle Paul warning Timothy that everything depends on the preaching of the Word of God in the church? Why such a serious charge?
2 Timothy 4:3-4

For  the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to myths.

Paul is so urgent with Timothy and calls the preaching of the Word a "trust" that must be guarded because the church needs the preaching of the Word, but the world around (and in) our local churches is constantly attacking that Word and seeking to pull believers away from it.

That is why the church never stops needing instruction. Remember Paul urged Timothy to preach the Word continually, "in season and out of season."

I think that is one of the biggest problems in the local church today. God gives a preacher, who rightly understand the urgency of his calling, to a local church, and yet most of those who sit under his teaching do not see how desperately they need the Word.

This is a huge reason why so many people in the local church do not embrace their elders and pastors as gifts from the hand of Christ Himself.

I think that is why the author of Hebrews pleaded with congregation members to obey their leaders and listen to them. Because even if they don't see the urgency of their need, their leaders do. That is what their leaders (their pastors and elders) have been gifted and called to see).

Hebrews 13:17

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.

But rebellion is in the heart of every sinner. And sinners fill up the church. And that is why when God was commenting on the state of his people in Isaiah He called them rebels from birth:
Isaiah 48:8
You have not heard, you have not known. Even from long ago your ear has not been open, because I knew that you would deal very treacherously; and you have been a rebel from birth.

And that is why when Christ set up the church He set it up with structure in mind and authority. 


Authority always brings out some rebellion in sinners. Everyone is fine until someone tells them something they don't want to hear. Or tells them to change something that they don't want to change.


If you have been sitting in a church for even a few months and you never hear something that your flesh does not like, then you are in a bad church. A pastor that only preaches the parts of the Word of God that make you feel good is not preaching the Word. He is purposeful using the Word to gain followers, not to show sinners their need for Christ.


I'm not saying that your pastor should be a jerk either. But he is an authority. He is a steward of the Word of God. And as a steward, He must speak for Christ, not for himself. And the first thing Christ does with every sinner is expose the places in his life where he is still in rebellion to His Word. And then He takes the Word and slowly begins to cut out your will and replace it with His.


Rebellion comes from pride and the first place we see pride rear its ugly head in the local church is when its members decide to come up with every excuse in the world not to obey their leaders and not submit to their teaching.


If this wasn't a problem, the Lord would not have inspired these words. Hebrews 13:17

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.

And in the NT you see this kind opt language over and over again about the role of a pastor, "keep watch," "Guard," "lead," "be alert."

Why? Because rebellion is always at the door way of every local church and in order for the Gospel to thrive there, rebellion must be killed and the desire to submit and follow the Word where it is preached must live!

In 2 Timothy 1:14, Paul urges Timothy to "guard, that which has been entrusted to him."

He tells him to guard the Word because it will be attacked, and then in Hebrews 13:17 the writer is pleading with the congregation to see that is exactly what their elders have been called to do on their behalf, "for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account."

Christ sent elders into the local church to "guard the Word" as a precious treasure and only as they guard the Word from being attacked can they then effectively "keep watch over the souls" that Christ has given into their care.

Pastors are not simply preachers of the Word, they are also guardians of it and watchers over the souls of their people.

Most people who sit in local churches today have no clue of the heavy responsibility this is to their pastor. Which, again is one reason why they do not embrace him as a gift.

If you are a member of a local church please read this carefully.

The church never stops needing the instruction of the Word of God from their pastor and elders. Never. You can never know too much about how the Gospel applies to your marriage or to your parenting or to your work life or to your relationship to your parents. 

You always need instruction and your pastor is called by God to give you that instruction. And to protect you from following any other instruction but the Word of God. That is his calling.


So unless you have strong Scriptural evidence that his instruction to you is unbiblical...DO NOT REJECT IT!


Your pastor is called by Christ to, "be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction."

Why? Because you never stop needing to be "reproved, rebuked, exhorted and instructed" by the Word of God.

Because the moment you stop allowing your pastor to preach the message of the Gospel into your heart and life, the moment you start shutting off your ears and closing down your heart because you get your feelings hurt, is the moment that you are the most vulnerable to attacks and the lies of Satan.

The moment you stop listening to the Word is the moment you start listening to self. And Satan will start pulling on your heart strings. The pride within you will raise its ugly head and convince you that you deserve to be treated better and you don't need your pastor's wisdom and instruction anyway. And then you will start looking around for  a message that is more appealing to your flesh.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to myths.

On one occasion, the apostle Paul was encouraging the Ephesian elders to continue faithfully instructing the Ephesian church because if they failed to do this the people would fall into the temptation of Satan. True teachers of the Word must remain faithful because false teachers (vessels of Satan) are always there to whisper in their ears and pull them away.

Your pastor is working hard guarding the Word of God from being twisted and watching over your soul so that you don't hurt yourself and your family and your testimony. And even more important, your pastor is trying to keep the church healthy so that it does not hurt the name of Christ.

Acts 20:28-29

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among whom the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

You need to wake up. Your pastor was not given to you to appeal to your flesh and to make you feel good about yourself. He was given to you by Christ to preach the Word of God into your life so that you might repent of sin and be "conformed into the image of the Son."

The word of God is not a gentle pillow that you can rub your ego on at night and rest softly in your sin. The Word of God, according to Hebrews 4:12,

is sharper than  a double-edged sword, and is meant to pierce through your flesh and dive into your soul...it judges the very thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The Word of God, faithfully preached by your elders is meant to expose your sin and show it to you. Don't reject that. Because the moment you do, Satan is ready to destroy you.

1 Peter 5:8
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Christ gave you a pastor and elders because we not only need to constantly be instructed by the Word of God, but we need called and gifted men to protect protect us from following error.

So leave your pride that says that can never happen to you. If it couldn't, the Word of God wouldn't warn you so much about it and it certainly wouldn't urge pastors to watch out for it.

Your job is to remain humble and teachable toward him in that instruction. Because God has given him to you for that very purpose. God gave pastors to His people for their good. 

Embrace your pastor and your elders as the gift of a guardian and a watchman for your soul. When he accepted the call to pastor your church, he laid down his life for that purpose.

2 Corinthians 4:5
For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus' sake.

Reforming the church is embracing God's gift of pastors

What should the church want from their pastor-elders? What should they look for in a pastor or elders? What should the church expect their role to be?

The most important question that the church should ask when addressing issues like this is, "Who decides the role of the pastor?"

Where did the role of the pastor originate? Where did it come from?
Did it come from pastors?
Did it come from congregations? No.

The role of the pastor did not originate from any man. The role of the pastor did not even originate in the church. It originated from Scripture. And therefore Scripture alone must dictate what the role of the pastor should be in the church. 

Believers should want what the Bible wants. They should want a pastor that lines up with the Biblical qualifications not with their own feelings, thoughts and opinions. Our opinions really do not matter when it comes to deciding who our pastors should be and what his role is in the church.

Only God's truth matters when it comes to things that originate with Him and everything does! He chooses equips godly men for pastoring and shepherding the flock and then His Spirit alone calls them into the ministry.

Acts 20:28
...the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God.

Therefore when it comes to deciding who our pastors should be and what role they should carry out in the church we must start with Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), "conforming everything in our lives to the Word of God."

NOTE: Let me preface all that I am about to say with this quick note. I am going to write a separate blog at a later time about those men who call themselves pastors but who are not faithfully preaching the Word or shepherding the sheep. Because there are those men out there and they are a threat to the church rather than a blessing to it. Paul spends a lot of time in his letters to Timothy warning him about these false teachers and urging him to remove them from the body. But today I am only addressing how the church should treat men who are truly called to the position of elder and are faithfully carrying out that role.

So this is going to be my first series of posts on the same topic: how the church is called by Scripture to view their pastors and elders. I'm not sure how many of these posts I will do, so bear with me. I just know that if I try to shove everything into only one you will sit here for far too long.

I have one major issue to deal with in this first post on the role of the pastor and I will leave the rest to the following posts. And that is that Christ gave pastors to the local church and therefore the embers of the church are called by God to recognize them as a gift to them from His hand.

In my previous post on our view of the local church, I mentioned that because worldliness has crept into the church it has given many of its members (professing believers) a low view of the church.

The first place where that becomes the most visible is how the congregation treats their pastor or elders.

That is why we must correct our mistreatment of pastors and change our wrong expectations of their role by pointing out very clearly this biblical truth: God gave pastors to the church. God gave pastors to the bride of Christ!

Ephesians 4:11-13
And He gave some as apostles and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stare which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Because God gave pastors and elders to the church to lead the church, it makes perfect sense that if you have a low view of the local church then you will have a low view of your God-given leaders. And you will develop wrong expectations as to why they are there.

In order to keep us from developing unbiblical expectations of the pastor's role, let's begin by looking at two biblical words from the text we just read: "He gave"...


Ephesians 4:11-12
And He gave some...as pastors and teachers

Let's just think about those two words for one moment. "He gave."

Where else do we see those two words in Scripture? The first place that probably came to your mind was

John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son...

And who did God give His Son to? The world? Yes, in a sense, but if you read that verse in context He actually gave Him specifically to the church that is presently in the world. He gave Him to the elect, who live in the world among every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Revelation 5:9-10
...for you were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

When God gave His Son to the world, He was specifically giving Him to the church in the world, to purchase them out of the world.

It was a sacrificial giving. It was a giving of Christ to take on the punishment of the cross. Christ went to the cross not for a general purpose but for a very specific purpose: to purchase the salvation of His elect children around the world. Every one of them will one day come out of the world and live with Him eternally in heaven because He purchased them.

So God gave His Son to the church and He gave the church to His Son.

John 17:6
I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your Word.

As we discussed in my last post, there is nothing more precious to Christ than His bride. It is a gift to Him from His Father. He laid down His life to purchase her out of her sin and gave her new life. First the Father gave Christ to save the church, and now that Christ has saved His bride, now He wants to nourish her with the Word of God.

So Christ gave a special gift to His bride, to serve her like He does, to lay down their lives for her and preach His Word to her. Christ gave His church pastors.

Those same two words that are used to tell us that God the Father gave Christ to His church are now being used to tell us that God the Son gave pastors to His church.

Ephesians 4:11-13
And He gave some as apostles and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,

Why did Christ give pastors to His church, to His bride? How do they best serve the church?

Ephesians 4:11-13
And He gave some...as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;

He gave pastors to His bride to equip them and build them up in their salvation.

The church is called the body of Christ because it has His name on it - it has His blood on it. It bears His death marks, His seal.

Therefore there is nothing more important to Christ than to uphold the reputation of His name and His Father's name by strengthening and building up the body of Christ.

How does He do that? By giving to them pastors and elders who will faithfully and patiently preach and teach that Word to them, thus equipping them with a greater understanding of the Word of God.

2 Timothy 4:1-2
I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

Do you realize your great need for the Word? Are you hungry to understand it better and to apply it to your life?

Then be thankful! Be thankful that God gave you a pastor that is willing to study hard to teach it to you and your family.

1 Thessalonians 5:12-13
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.

1 Timothy 5:17
The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.

Is the Scripture not clear on this point? Christ is a gift to the church to save the church and to give it life, where there was only death. Pastors are a gift to the church as well, to work hard to continually point the church back to Christ!

If you love Christ, then you should love your local church. And if you love your local church, then you should love your pastor who serve you in that church in order to point you to Christ, the life and breath of the church.


Based on everything I have discussed in this post, I have three major challenges for you. And I am giving you these challenges with the presupposition that you actually have a biblically qualified pastor or elders in your church. Because if you don't you should honestly evaluate why you are still in that church.

1) So first of all, if you have elders that are faithfully pastoring you with the Word of God, then you only have one option: You must view them and their ministry as a gift from the hand of Christ to you and your church. 

2) Secondly, if he is a gift from the goodness of Christ to you, then do you treat Him like a gift? Do you encourage him? Do you faithfully pray for him? Do you go up to him from time to time and just tell him how much you appreciate the fact that he spends hours in his study preparing to preach the Word of God to you and your family every week.

3) Finally, if he is a gift from Christ to your church, and if he is spending hours preparing to preach the Word of God to you and your family every week, are you listening? Are you listening to the Word as intently and as passionately as he is preaching it? If you are sitting there during His sermons twiddling your thumbs and day dreaming, you are not receiving Him as the gift Christ intended Him to be! You should be preparing your heart throughout the week to hear the Word of God and learn from him. And then you should seek not only to hear it, but to apply it your life and be changed by it. If He is preaching the Word of God to you, then every week is an opportunity to grow or change something in your life so that you can move closer to Christ and further out of the world.


That is not only what every true pastor wants from his people, but more importantly that is what Christ wants from His people. Pastors and elders are simply called to lay down their lives to make sure that you know exactly who Christ is and what He is saying.


The more you start viewing your pastor as a gift, the more you will start really listening to Christ and being changed by His Word.