Christian Ministry: What Are The Tasks? Part 4

Driving home: That is, he exercises wise, loving, assertive leadership of the congregation of God's people.

The word 'take care' in 1 Timothy 3:5 is illustrated by the Good Samaritan's instruction to the innkeeper, showing that an elder's care involves seeing and responding to needs.

In 1 Peter 3, 5, Paul says, If a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care? Of the house of God. And that word take care is the very word used in the story of the Good Samaritan. When the Good Samaritan took the guy who had been battered and bruised and left half dead and left him in the inn, he said to the innkeeper, take care of him.

3:32 - 4:04 Read in full sermon

The point: We need to pray that God will give to our people a spirit of repentance, that they're ready to change anything that causes grief to the Lord Jesus whose church it is.

An old black preacher's definition of 'status quo' as 'the mess we's in' is used to humorously but pointedly convey that the church often needs radical change according to God's Word.

There was a certain old black preacher kept using the word status quo in his sermon. And one day one of the sisters came to him and says, Preacher, you's always using that word status quo. What's the status quo? And he says, well sister, the best way I knows to tell you is this, the status quo is the mess we's in.

15:30 - 15:51 Read in full sermon

The point: We need something of that spirit of our blessed Lord that we see that the church is his house and in his house only the things that he has commanded should be there.

Jesus' actions in Mark 11, looking around the temple and then cleansing it, illustrate the Lord's zeal for His Father's house and the need for pastors to purge unbiblical practices from the church.

Now you won't find that in Webster's dictionary. But that's it, that's the mess we's in. And we need to cry to God that the people will see the mess we's in needs to be changed by the word of God. When Jesus went to the temple at Jerusalem, it says in Mark 11, that first night that he came into Jerusalem, he went in, and the Greek is very vivid, he went in and looked round about upon all things.

15:56 - 16:26 Read in full sermon

The point: We need to protect our people from the wolves that would devour our sheep from without.

The image of a pack of wolves circling a flock, looking for weak or stray sheep to devour, vividly illustrates the external dangers to the church from false teachers and cults.

There's the picture of a pack of wolves circling round the flock, circling, circling, circling. What are they looking for? They're looking for a stray sheep. They're looking for a weak sheep.

19:48 - 20:01 Read in full sermon

The point: You've got to have your ears open, your eyes open. That's why he says, be watchful.

The military term 'watchful' is illustrated by a soldier at his post in the dark, straining his senses for any sign of the enemy, emphasizing the intense vigilance required of shepherds.

That's a military term. That's the picture of the man sitting at his post at three in the morning, pitch black night, and his ears are straining, listening for the slightest crackle of a leaf or the snapping of a twig, his eyes peering into the darkness, his pupils fully dilated, looking for any sign of any enemy. That's the word he uses. You shepherds, be watchful.

22:28 - 22:54 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Addressing the identity of church planters, Martin expresses reluctance to call them 'elders' of the sending church, preferring to scrutinize them by 1 Timothy 3 standards for…

The process of sending Steve Hoffmeier to the Philippines, including his summer experiences in Africa and the Philippines, illustrates the church's method for scrutinizing and preparing a church planter for cross-cultural ministry.

In other words, if a guy has been brought up in a certain cultural framework and anything outside of that, he gets unstrung, he doesn't belong there. And you say, how do you know that? Well, in our case, we try to send a man into several situations for a summer and then get a readout on him. Steve Hoffmeier, who's been sent out by our church to the Philippines, he spent a summer in Africa and then he spent another summer in the Philippines and the readout we got was in these extra things he manifested unusual adaptability and therefore had he stayed among us we would have had no problem recogn...

29:44 - 30:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Our people will come to understand that they have real accountability one to another. They are to exhort one another daily. They are to bear one another's burdens.

The example of members noticing absences or needs and spontaneously providing help (like meals for a new mother) illustrates how a healthy church fosters a natural network of accountability and care among its members.

And then we're able to follow through or send one of the deacons to check into the matter. And often in a healthy church situation, according to the natural age groupings, according to the natural groupings of shared interests like the young mothers, these lovely little networks of normal cells develop, not artificially because you've all split them up by geography or by age or by alpha, by alphabet. And we never even know what's going on until I get a note to be read at prayer meeting. Please read at prayer meeting.

32:58 - 33:32 Read in full sermon

The point: If you've gone to this man and said look, I do not regard you as a shepherd but a wolf and I don't want you messing around with my sheep and if one more of my sheep come to me and say you've tried to call them get into t…

Martin recounts an incident where scruffy-looking men tried to propagate heresy at the back of the church, illustrating the need for elders and deacons to be watchful and assertively protect the flock from external threats, even to the point of physical removal.

and tell our people to avoid you that if you come by way of the phone they're going to hang up if you come and knock on the door we're going to tell them not to open the door that's what the Bible says to do with people that by their fair speech would beguile your people I had in my notes but I didn't have time to give an example of protecting the people back some months ago at the end of the service four or five scruffy looking guys came in and sat down at the back of the church and afterwards because some of our men have been trained to be watchdogs in the right sense one of the deacons came...

39:06 - 39:50 Read in full sermon