The Bride of Christ: Our Love for Christ’s Church
Let’s pray again.
Once more our God and King, we come and crave your favor. Oh Lord, we do not wise in any way to shift our gaze and expectation and our hope from You. Without you we can do nothing. We need You O God to be and to do the least of the things which You call us to be and to do. So we plead again now that Your Spirit will draw near to each one of us, to enable us in preaching and hearing, and then in pastoring and caring. That Your name might be honored among the saints and Your church established and beautified to the glory and praise of your great name, we ask it through Christ our Savior. Amen!
Paul is on his way to Jerusalem where tribulations and chains await him. On his journey he calls for the Ephesian elders and they make a not short journey from Ephesus to Miletus. This is a man who for many of them would be their father in the faith, the man who has taught them year after year. The man who has modeled a faithful and fruitful ministry to them. And he delivers this powerful pastoral address in which you hear many of the notes that he will return to in writing 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus. It is a potent declaration. It is the first and only time in the entire record of the Acts of the Apostles in which Paul is recorded to be speaking to an entirely Christian congregation. The only point in which he is able to assume in substantial measure that these are all God’s people, and he presumes a functioning plurality of elders in Ephesus. I think that’s important, it is necessarily central, but he calls for the elders in Ephesus and he speaks to them as an eldership. He is speaking as a pastor to other pastors, and I think the emotive and repetitive nature of what is contained here thus suggests that Luke is pretty much writing down what he heard and not just trying to provide some helpful and better structured summary. He sets as he often does without pride or arrogance his own example before them, with the suggestion that this is likely to be the last time that they see him, and that brings this additional pressure and intensity both in his speaking and in their hearing. It presses upon them the light of his own example and the circumstances which he describes, the privilege and the duty of being under-shepherds of the flock of God there in Ephesus. And perhaps the key text is there in verse 28, “Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the flock of God which He purchased with His own blood.” The first thing you have there is a command that is issued. Because of these things, “take heed to yourselves and to all the flock” keep careful watch over yourselves and over the flock. A call to a constant and continuing guardian spirit to particular objects. First of all yourselves. Now the immediate echo from 1 Timothy 4:16, is there, Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine to the teaching. “Take heed to yourselves” Paul is speaking to all of these men and he is speaking to them individually and together and he is calling them to keep a constant and continual spirit of guardian care over their own souls and lives and it maybe that he is saying to them, “you take care of yourself and you take care of one another”. One of the particular benefits and blessings of plural eldership is that mutual care amongst the under-shepherds for one another. Look after yourself but look after yourselves, a command that takes on an additional resonance when you remember his warning that also among yourselves men will rise up. And he may be speaking to them as elders and not just to them as representatives of the church. Look out for yourself brothers, but look out also for those with whom you labor. And isn’t it precious that when we are alone, what I think pastor Dan calls an elder-raft rather than an eldership, to be able to go into those environments and build those relationships where you are not just looking after yourself, you can at least in some measure have someone else who helps to look after you. Our duty to others is built upon that duty to ourselves, duty in regards to ourselves lays the foundation for our duty to others. Why do soldiers train? Why do doctors maintain their currency in the latest techniques, in the most recent medications? It is so they can act effectively on behalf of others. The soldier hones his skills, he learns his craft, so that when he goes into the battlefield he is able to cooperate effectively with his fellow soldiers and conduct himself in such a way that those whom he is meant to be defending, or the cause he’s meant to be advancing can be either advanced or defended in the right fashion. The doctor is not just equipping himself for his own sake. It is not just a profession badge of excellence, he is doing it so that when the sick people come he knows what to recommend on how to treat them and what medications to prescribe. And so it is with the under-shepherd of the flock of Jesus Christ. Our care for ourselves individually and mutually is not just for ourselves but for the sake of others also. Our convictions and our character and our conduct need to be brought back again and again under close scrutiny and with all the honesty of which we are capable before God in His mercy and in His holiness, to ensure that we are continually, and carefully and consistently in ourselves what God is calling us to be. We are to take heed to ourselves and to all the flock. Will say more about this in a moment. But it is a charge to have this constant and continual guardian spirit to all who are committed to our care without exception. And I say nothing especially here that is in any way novel or spectacular when I underline that Paul is enforcing and exhorting once again the fact that our ministerial and pastoral usefulness hinges on cultivated devotion to Jesus Christ and in an increasing likeness to Him. When Machen says what his people need the most is holiness he is echoing the biblical realities of cultivated godliness for the sake of the people of God. Every part of our humanity needs to be under the influences of the Holy Spirit as the word is brought to bear. There can be no exceptions in us; no part of you or me, no room of your life which bars God from entering, if you and I are to be effective ministers of the new covenant. My brother Troy, when he is teaching the younger men in his church always has two parallel tracks, doctrinal and devotional. Learn the truth and cultivate your walk with Jesus Christ. And those two things cannot and should not ever be separated. “Take heed to yourselves and take heed to all the flock.” And the one must follow the other, you cannot do the second until you do the first. Because sheep do get guided and if you leave the path then you will take them with you. And it is then our duty first of all to take heed to ourselves, to ensure that as shepherds we stay on the straight and narrow way in order that then, leading and caring and ministering to others we can say legitimately, “imitate me as I also imitate Christ.” Come where I am seeking to go and you can call people back to the right way rather than leading them astray. “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock,” the command that is issued. And the sphere that is identified, “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.” There is at least an implied humility here. Despite what I have seen in a couple of translations and commentaries, I don’t think that this language sustains the sense, “the flock over which God has made you overseers.” It is among which. You stand with them, you are intimately involved in the flock, you are part of the flock, you are amongst other things a sheep as much as you are a shepherd. And you are part of that congregation as much as you have any responsibility toward it. This does not undermine appropriate pastoral authority, but it does situate it; it locates and conditions it. You are to shepherd the flock of God among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Now that is properly limiting. All the flock and everyone of that particular flock are under that continual and constant guardian care and spirit. Those who are older and those who are younger, those who are weaker and those stronger, those who stumble always. And when you think you’ve bound them up, they keep stumbling. And those who seem able at this point to run, those who are married, those who are single and those who are back-sliding or backslidden, and those who are pressing on, those who are easy and those who are stubborn. Those whom you go to visit with the confidence that you will be more ministered to than minister, and they send you away with a spring in your step. There is a dear lady in our congregation, she has her struggles but if I visit her, I’m the one that comes away with a blessing. And there are people you go to with dragging feet and you are praying that perhaps just in the last moment in the Knick of time you might get that last minute phone call that would give you the legitimate reason not to sit through another hour or two of but what you fear may again prove to be pointless investment. The Jews and the Gentiles the people of every class and color, socially, racially and culturally. No exceptions no excuses. No unrighteous distinction, every member of that flock, over which Christ has made us overseers. Trampling upon every carnal instinct for an unrighteous favor toward the one or the other. Pandering to no whim, responding to no illegitimate entreaty or pressure. I am Christ’s shepherd by the Spirit’s appointment to every one of these people. It defines my responsibility as all who are under my peculiar care by which I mean particular care as opposed to just strange care and within my reach as a shepherd. But that’s also liberating because this is my sphere of responsibility and sometimes we get in righteously and unnecessarily agitated. I don’t know about you but when I read the Apostle Paul and I hear him with that great catalogue of sufferings, and at the end of it he says, “besides all these things that which comes upon me daily my care for all the churches.” And I think Lord how burdened am I by the care of one congregation, how heavy a load is it to have even a slight degree of responsibility not just towards these saints but maybe investment here or care there? What pressure there is when a brother calls you and says, “Do you mind me asking you about these things in my congregation?” The kind of mutual interaction. Now we’ve heard, and I am glad we’ve heard, because it saves me putting all the qualifications. This is not in any way to undermine that proper, righteous relationship and interdependence among like-minded churches. This is not a recipe for isolation, or parochialism, or crass disregard for the health of other congregations. I sincerely believe that as ministers we should be asking, what can I do within and around and beyond the immediate sphere in which the Holy Spirit has put me? I do not exist as an island without any connection to or communion with my brother and sister in other places. But this does deliver me from that oppression of spirit that would distract me from the responsibility that I have been given as a particular shepherd of a particular flock. However many talents the Lord gives us we can wrap none of them in the sheet and leave it in the ground. But when the Savior returns I do think the first question (not the only) but the first question He will ask is “Where are those particular sheep that I committed to your particular care”? Brothers, when everyone else got a thousand ideas of we could or should or might be doing. The Holy Spirit has made you over-seer of a flock, and you are not obliged to redefine (In fact at some points we must be careful not to attempt to) the work we are given to do. The primary sphere of our responsibility has been set out for us. And there will be times, and that means you and I can breathe a sigh of relief, and use that unusual words, that our wives might wish at times can print in flash card when we need it, NO, NO NO. I hope my wife isn’t listening to this, she’s gonna love that. It means that what we need to know and to do, is what we need to know and to do necessary to watch over that particular sheep. That helps us, it liberates us and it limits us. The sphere identified.
Also the authority that is clarified. The Holy Spirit has made you overseers. The Holy Spirit has made you overseers. God is too wise and too good to appoint us to a task for which he will not equip us, and the appointment comes first. Now there are some invitations that you can ignore, there are some appointments that you can decline. But if the Holy Spirit makes you something, you don’t get to say no. Now some of you have tried. At least one of us has tried. Too often like Jonah, too often like Moses, too often wishing perhaps especially at the onset that we can be anything but what we are afraid we might be called to be. And yet like the hound of heaven we are pursued and God will get His men in the end. He will trace down those upon whom He has set His love and appointed for this task, and it is dangerous disobedience for any man to resist the obligation that the Holy Spirit lays upon him to serve in this way. It’s a terribly dangerous thing to be a minister of the flock of God, but I do think it is more dangerous not to be one if you ought to be. To be out of the way when the Spirit has called you into it. This then is a holy obligation because of a heavenly vocation and all our responsibility and all its associated dignity derives from the fact that we have been called by God to this work. It’s the language of being appointed to duty. It’s similar to what Paul says to Timothy about being enlisted as a soldier. I’m not here because I wanted to be here. You know what I mean by that. I am not here by my own appointment. I am not here because I thought this would be a great idea. I’m not here because any other man first and foremost thought this would be a great idea. This is not personal and this ought never to be a carnal assessment. I am here because the Holy Spirit has made me what I am to the people over whom I have been appointed and among whom I am to serve. And that means I cannot walk away, I don’t have that liberty. I’ve got liberty to serve where I am and do what I am called to do. I don’t have liberty not to serve. You remember Elijah before Ahab, “as the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand”. Without that I don’t think even Elijah would be anywhere near Ahab’s palace. In the nicest possible way I was not given a choice. Just as in being called to Christ I was made willing and came willingly so too with regard to this office and function we are made willing by the Holy Spirit. We have not put ourselves were we are. If we have, now is the time to walk away, but if we’ve been put there by the Holy Spirit we have no freedom to discharge ourselves. And with that authority clarified is then that equipment implied.
The Holy Spirit has made you, and having put you there and having appointed you to that duty; he is not going to leave you to carry out that duty in your own strength. Called men are constituted for the task and that does not make us supermen. We might wish at times that we were men made of iron and bronze, men who did not dent easily, men who neither bruised nor bleed because of the pains, and the pressures and the sorrows and the griefs and the challenges of the work to which we are called. And you might wish at times that the Lord would speak to you as he did to Jeremiah and then some. “Lord not just my forehead to be as brass but all of me to be as brass.” But that’s not the equipment. The armor that we wear is not the armor that shields us against people. It’s not the distance that we sometimes wish in our selfishness that we can build between us and those to whom we are called. It’s not the spirit who quite likes the idea of being raised six feet above contradiction on the platform above the building, not the spirit that says “you know I think I can get to the door at the back before any of them get to me” and not because…(I know of one man who had to do that because they were gonna kill him, in all seriousness, he spotted his escape route before he began the sermon given the circumstances and he needed it) I am talking about “I just don’t wanna talk to them”, “I just don’t wanna deal with them”. The Spirit constitutes the elders for the task. We don’t call a man and hope he becomes what he isn’t. We recognize as churches what God has already made him. The Spirit guides the saints, the same language of recognition or appointment is found in Acts 13 verse 2 and Acts 14 verse 23. The church on earth ratifies the decision that is made by her head in heaven. Christ is sending gifts to His church and He is providing for them and equipping them and enabling them, and the church of Christ is there as simply to say, “Now we can discern that here is God’s gift to us, and it would be folly on our part not to recognize that this is that man”. Christ has given some to be pastors, and evangelists, apostles, teachers. Men have been given to the church at their appointed time and for their appointed role. And there are times when we feel crushed and overwhelmed, cripplingly ineffective and you wonder if the Holy Spirit might not have been at work in the saints when they thought that you were the man for the job. You won’t go so far as to say He made the mistake but maybe they did. And I can’t do this, I can’t do this anymore. “To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, to the other the aroma of life leading to life, and who is sufficient for these things for we are not as many peddling the word of God but as of sincerity but as from God we speak in the sight of God in Christ.” Who is sufficient for these things? That’s not the last word in sufficiency, not in that section chapter 3 verses 4 and 6, and, “We have such truth through Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient in ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves but our sufficiency is from God who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant not of the letter but of the spirit, for the letter kills but the spirit gives life.”
If brothers and fathers the Holy Spirit has made us overseers in a particular flock in every single thing, at every single moment that you need will be supplied. And you want more, I shouldn’t accuse you, I want more and I want it in advance. I want to know it’s there before I start, I want that surfeit as I were of grace. But I never been promised that, what I have been promised, to use the language of the Shorter Catechism, with regard to daily bread, is my competent portion and enough for that hour that keeps me in holy dependence moment by moment upon my God and my Savior and His Spirit. A perfect sufficiency to enable and to sustain you to be everything that God requires and expects you to be toward the particular people who He has entrusted to your care in such a way to secure His everlasting glory. And faith needs to hang on to that. When we feel burdened, when we feel pathetic, when we feel utterly incompetent, and when the people whom we love turn their back and walk away and say, “I do not wish to be shepherded by you”. And then there is a duty that is imposed. This is the flock of God, verse 28, “Among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” You have been made overseers to shepherd the church of God. The church is the flock of Jesus Christ, the flock of God. The elders are the shepherds, those who have been appointed, first of all to gather the sheep, we do think and we should think our shepherding in terms of guarding and guiding, but the good shepherd came to seek and save that which we lost. You may know the story of Archibald Brown, one of Spurgeon’s contemporaries, he preached on the north side of the river Thames in London at the same period. And Brown was exemplary at least in this, when he went out to preach other men, have gone to the same area, and they have gone into the place and they’ve said, “We can’t do anything here. There is no congregation”. Archibald Brown went there and he said, I’m gonna get a congregation to whom I will preach, I will go and find the people, I will go and bring the people, I will gather them and I will speak God’s word to them. I’m not gonna sit and wait in some perverted notion of divine sovereignty until the pews fill themselves, I will go after the wandering sheep and I will speak to them in tones that I hope have echoes in them of the heavenly voice. So that those who belong to Him come, and them I will continue to guard, and them I will continue to guide and I, in company with those other men that I pray God will give me so that amongst these elders is found that variety and diversity of grace and gift that allows us all together to take care of this flock, we as overseers will shepherd the flock of God. We’re appointed to look at them and over them, not to look past them or around them. Our eyes upon the sheep, our hands upon their flesh in that sense, caring for them, aware of them, observing them. We have the principle of working, from the individual to the corporate. We dwell with our wives with understanding, do we dwell with the church with understanding? Do you know the people of God? Have you looked at them and over them? Are you concerned for the distinctive characters and gifts and circumstances and challenges and difficulties? Unrelaxed vigilance, out of a heart of love is required in the face of all the dangers that come in from outside and that rise up from within. And that is where Paul goes. “For I know this that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock, also from among yourselves, men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves”. There will be those savage wolves, the great shepherd Himself in John 10 warned us about that disposition and expectation. But the shepherd stands when those who come in from outside to attack are approached. Then there is this language of some who rise up and twist the truth and pull the saints away from the appointed task. Remember that this is not only the congregation for which the apostle would write Ephesians and chapter 5 but also the congregation for which the apostle John would write Revelation and chapter 2 verse 1 to 7, “ I know your works, your labor, your patience and that you cannot bear those who are evil and you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars, and you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my name sake, nevertheless, I have this against you, you have left your first love.” That’s the dynamic, that’s the reality. You read Ephesians and you see that in this culture of immorality and sorcery and adultery. Here is this shining light, the church of Jesus Christ the pillar and ground of the truth and it is going to come under assault and you “you men” says Paul, you are the ones who are to keep guard over the flock of God, to watch them, to warn them and to ward against them. The language of Ezekiel 34 with regards to faithful shepherds, and the language of Acts 11 and Acts 13 and the sense of Ephesians chapter 4 which he is using to remind them of these very duties. That’s to be your daily experience. You know how shepherding is described. For example in Genesis chapter 31 verse 36, Jacob becomes angry and rebukes Laban, “And Jacob answered and said to Laban, ‘What is my trespass? What is my sin? That you have so hotly pursued me, although you have searched all my things, what part of your household things have you found?” And then he begins to explain, “These 20 years I have been with you, your ewes and your females goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the flock, the rams of your flock. That which was torn by beasts, I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was in the day that drought consumed me and the frost by night and my sleep departed from my eyes. Thus I have been in your house 20 years”. When David wants to communicate his essential memory of what is meant to be a shepherd, he talks about what it meant to be a shepherd. He talked about the time when the lion and the bears and the wolves came to carry away the flock. And he had to step in and with his shepherding equipment. Get that sheep, that lamb back from the marauder, and put his own life at risk in order to preserve the flock of Jesus Christ. When we think of the Lord as our shepherd, He is the valley of the shadow of death, not just the one who strolls through the green fields. What is shepherding? It is not a man with a harp skipping through the lush grass, playing and singing as he goes. It’s droughts by day and frost by night, and its wild beasts and its sick animals and its sparse food and its needed water. And its all been modeled for us by the great shepherd of the sheep. That’s what it looks like. And everything that is spoken of Him and everything good shepherd who has followed Him is expected of us. And that’s nice when its in a movie, Gandalf: the Mines of Moria, the Bridge of Khazad Dum, and the Balrog comes. You know with the British intonation “Baalroog! You shall not pass!” and down he goes, “ Run you fools!!” except then he climbs back up, and says “phew! That was close” He turned around and there are another ten Balrogs coming down the line towards him. You see this wasn’t a movie for the men in Ephesus. Hosts of darkness forces of spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places. Not made up ghosts and gullies. But all the minions of Satan marching against the church of Christ. Paul says “they stand together” And you’re in the front line, and you’re to go down before they do. A few weeks ago, in the rugby world cup, Wales were playing against Australia. I did tell Troy I might be compelled to commend his country, there you go. If you know rugby there is a try line, and the point of the game that is most intense is to get the ball over the line and to ground it. And red of Wales comes up against the gold and green of Australia. The Australians are down from 15 to 13 men because 2 of them have been sent to the sinbin, and the Welch are pounding the line. And these big men are there 6 foot 6, 6 foot 8 some of them weighing some kind of poundage that if you and I were carrying it, it would make us wider that we are tall and they are running at pace and they are pounding the line in order to ground the ball, and the golden line is holding and they come again, and they come again and they come again, and there are times even when they reach the line, and the men in gold are getting their bodies underneath in other to stop the ball from going down. And some of them are being dragged off injured and the blood replacement are coming on. And over 15 minutes, the line holds and in what many commentators have said is the greatest display of attacking and defending rugby in which no try has been scored in the history of the game as far as they can remember it. It is exhilarating and its moving and I love it buts its sport and these men are being told “its your body that goes between that enemy and my people” and that’s not so exhilarating and its not some spectacular line as you float out of this, out of sight. Its agonizing, sometimes deadly. There are men, I know some of them personally, they are never after these battles what they were before. They have been reduced and they remain reduced. They do not regain the strength that they once had. The energy does not return, the scares and the wounds are carried for the balance of their days. And they get back up and they throw themselves again in front of the demons and they stand against and hold the line as the enemy seeks to break through. And perhaps you hear the language of command and responsibility and duty and equipment and you think isn’t there somethings along the lines in this conference when things a little lighter. Is this it? Be crushed, be overwhelmed, go forth and die. Why would anybody who heard this want to start? How would anybody continue? And when will by God’s mercy will we finally finish? Its heavy isn’t it? Its dark. “Take heed to among yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God. And here is a ray of sunlight, which He purchased with His own blood.” The value that is implied. Here is the answer to every struggle and every failure and every disappointment that we face as gospel ministers because those among whom I stand at and over which I am called to look are those who have been redeemed by the blood of God. And that changes everything take the sunglasses off and all of a sudden 20/20 vision. Doesn’t necessarily make it look any nicer but it makes it look a whole lot better. And I don’t think as some do that is the language of the Father’s relationship to the Son. That the father gave the blood of His Son. I have no difficulty with saying that this is a reference to the death of God incarnate. That’s what Paul wants us to grasp. That God came into this world, to go back again to that passage in Timothy, He was manifested in the flesh, and He was manifested in the flesh because of love, and everything else that He did was driven along by this holy and consuming and definite and sovereign and well defined and pure and perfect love. And while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We go back again and again to the great demonstration of the love of God in Christ toward us. And Paul says when you are thinking about the challenge and the duty and the command and the responsibility and the weight of the equipment and the requirement of the work, remember why and for whom you are doing this. You are doing it for the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. And it is with blood washed spectacles, if you like, that we need to look at the church of Jesus Christ. In all its frailty and all its folly and in all its need as well as its growing beauty and developing likeness to Jesus Christ. She is His purchased, precious, personal possession. She is the beloved of His heart. She is the apple of His eye. And all that language that we find in Exodus or in Isaiah or in Ephesians or in Titus or in Peter, as the one upon whom Christ has set His love, the special treasure of God, the one whom He chose not for anything in them but for His own sovereign glory, that in them He might create that which is a standing declaration to the heavens themselves including those forces of darkness that He cannot be overcome, that the Galilean has conquered and is conquering and will conquer until that day. And Paul says to the Ephesians elders Brothers, this is not just a duty, it is a privilege. To you has been entrusted the care of the blood-bought bride of Christ. And that’s what enlivens all these other things. Here is every answer you need to the question why? And in some sense every answer you will need to the question how? I have loved her and I have saved her, you are called to show her my care. That’s a privilege indeed. That’s a glorious prospect. They are dear to us because they were first dear to Him. And again brothers and fathers until we have learned love from God, we cannot love His beloved as we should. William Arnet says, “How can the under-shepherd lightly esteem the flock which the Chief Shepherd bought with His blood?” What did I want to say? When I tried to work through these things, I said to one of the men earlier. There are some fresh pastoral wounds that may not be immediately evident in me and in others here. And perhaps you wanna say to the Lord Jesus, but she’s not lovely. And He says, “I know” and you want to say “But she doesn’t love me” And He says, “I know” and you say to the Lord Jesus, “But she doesn’t even want to be loved” And He says, “I know” and He looks at you with the same eyes with which He looked at Peter, and He asks, “What do you have to boast about? And when do you get to say that you are any different?” And He asks, “Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Do you love me? Feed my lambs. Do you really love me?” Perhaps we don’t actually want to say it, but how can we not? Lord you know all things. You know that I love you. They’re mine, you take care of them for me. Your care for the flock of Jesus Christ is the on-going expression of His great love toward them. Here is Baxter, “Oh then let us hear these arguments of Christ whenever we feel ourselves grow dull and careless. Did I die for these souls? And would you not look after them? Where they worth my blood and are they not worth your labor? Did I come down from heaven to earth to seek and to save that which was lost and would you not go to the next door or street or village to seek them? How small is your labor and condescension compared to mine. I debased myself to this. But it is your honor to be so employed. Have I done and suffered so much for their salvation and was I willing to make you a fellow worker with me and will you refuse to do that little which lies in your hands.” “Everytime” says Baxter we look at our congregations, “let us believingly remember that they are the purchase of Christ blood. And therefore should be regarded by us with the deepest interest and most tender affection. And I think its because Paul himself has learned that that he is able to say, “none of these things move me, nor do I count my life dear to me, so that I may finish my race with joy and the ministry that I received in the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God”. I am beloved says the apostle and I have learned and I’m learning to love. To love the God who loved me in Christ and then to love those who beloved by Him have been purchased with His own blood. And having learned love from the great shepherd, I am learning to love His sheep with Christ-like love. And I cannot love them until I begin to look at them with Christ’s eyes, and to love them with Christ’s heart. And I might say Father I cannot do this, Lord Jesus I cannot do this by myself and the answer comes back, “I never expected you to, you fool!” lovingly and graciously. “Oh my child didn’t I tell you I commend you to God and to the word of His grace which is able to build you up. And give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. Hebrews 13:20 “Now may the God of peace who brought our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the covenant make you (Can we not take this to ourselves), make you complete in every good work to do his will working in you what is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. What a privilege has been given to us, to shepherd the church of God, which our Savior has purchased with His own blood. To be the appointed instruments by which Christ makes his unlovely bride ever more lovely in His sight until that day. We are merely the groomsmen and there are a number of things that the Lord Jesus will say when he comes as groom. Don’t you want Him to look upon that portion of His bride which has been your care as a pastoral beautician, a true shepherder of the souls, and to smile upon her and to say “Is she not lovely? Here is my bride. Do not forget. Well done good and faithful servant because you have done what you are called to do. And you have been the means by which I have fitted her for me. And now I see her in all her loveliness and so do you. Tell me, tell me beloved servant what it not worthwhile? Now come enter into the joy of your Lord, the joy of Christ over His church. The joy of the groom over His bride.” Spurgeon said “I received some years ago orders from my master to stand at the foot of the cross till He comes, He hasn’t come yet but I mean to stand there till He does”. If you want to know this love and learn this love and tell this love and show this love and employ this love until He comes, stand where Spurgeon stood and where Paul stood. Take your stand at the foot of the cross where you’ve been called, and see and feel and know and tell the great love of God in Christ for His bride and stand there until He comes.
Let’s pray:
O God again we pray for the forgiveness of our sins not just as men but as ministers for the complaints and the frustrations and the despairs that we have too often felt with regard to your beloved people for our low expectations and our cowardice and our laziness our excuses and our follies, our harshnesses and our forgetfulness, we pray O God that you will work in us by your Spirit now and increasingly to take heed to ourselves and to all the flock to which your gracious Spirit has appointed us, among whom we stand as those who oversee, to shepherd the church of God which you purchase with your own blood. O God, you keep us faithful and would you make us fruitful and when the great day comes may all our joy be in your glory and the glory and the beauty of your beloved bride. We ask it for your great names sake, for the sake of your church. Amen.
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