1 Timothy 5:17-19
Your Pastor and You

I. Muscle Memory
1. Learning the flip-turn in swimming is hard if you've been swimming for years, turning normally.
2. When we do something regularly our brain has engraved on it that way, “muscle memory”.
3. When there is something we’ve been doing all our lives, like church, we think we know how to do it.
4. One day, the church will have to go through a process of choosing a new pastor.
II. Do We Really Need a Pastor? (1 Timothy 5:17-18)
1. Aren’t we all priests to God? Yes, but a pastor is not a priest.
2. Is the “pastor” a later development in the history of the church; a tradition that evolved?
3. Among elders who rule well is another group than the elders, who “labor in preaching and teaching.”
4. “Work” suggests that it was full-time work. "Laborer deserves his wage," shows that they are paid.
III. What Does the Pastor Do?
A. The Pastor’s Charge: Proclaim the Word (2 Timothy 4:1-2)
1. In good times and bad times. Have endurance, keep going even when it’s hard.
2. “Reprove, rebuke, and exhort”: reprove is to correct; to “rebuke” is a sharper form of correction, to call to repentance; “exhort” is positive and encouraging; to come alongside someone to help them.
3. Do this not only a patient tone but patiently keep doing it, with “long-suffering”.
4. What are the chances that some people are going to be offended by a pastor who does that?
B. The Pastor’s Authority (Titus 2:15)
1. “Declare these things.” Some of the ministry can be delegated.
2. Speak, exhort, and correct with “all authority,” literally “by command.”
3. How do you not “let anyone disregard you”? Do not allow yourself to be looked down on.
C. Jesus the Servant Leader (1 Peter 2:25)
1. Jesus is “the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” The word “shepherd” also means “pastor.”
2. When Peter disregarded His prediction of the cross, Jesus called him “Satan.”
3. Jesus rebuked His disciples and taught with all authority, with a commanding presence.
4. The idea that “servant leadership” means the pastor must accept being blamed unjustly is wrong.
IV. Problems With the Reflex to Blame the Pastor
A. It Is Nonsensical
1. Why would the pastor do something that would purposefully drive people away from the church?
2. Do you understand that the pastor is the one who most wants people not to be upset and leave?
B. It Is Unbiblical
1. 1 Timothy 5:19: Do not “admit” or receive or entertain; give it no weight; don’t consider it.
2. Don’t accept an accusation against an elder unless there are two or three witnesses to corroborate it.
C. It Is Divisive
1. Some people won’t reflexively go along with it. Some Christians aren’t going to put up with it.
2. We’re a cross-cultural church. People from other cultures haven’t learned the same reflex.
3. So they challenge our assumptions, our reflexive reactions, why we jump to the conclusions we do.
4. “That’s the way they are.” People in the white culture don’t keep their commitments.
5. Lee Kuan Yew: ‘white men might marry you quickly, they will also divorce you quickly.’
6. Joke: In the Chinese church they call the pastor’s wife “Mrs Pastor”; in the black church they call her “First Lady”; in the white church they call her to tell her the bathroom is dirty!
D. It Is Discouraging
1. If something has gone wrong in the church, the pastor feels it the most.
2. When something has gone wrong in the church is the worst time to start blaming him.
V. Invitation:
1. It’s God’s design that churches have pastors. Pastors are imperfect men, sinners like anyone else. But it is through them that THE Pastor and overseer of our souls, the Lord Jesus, shepherds us.
2. In 1 Peter 2, Christ suffered for us. He suffered all the beatings, the betrayals, the lashings, the thorns in the scalp, all the rejection and scorn and mockery we looked at over the last few weeks. He gave us an example that we might have to follow Him into suffering.
3. He also did it to do for us what we cannot follow Him into, to purchase our salvation. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” That’s how He was our servant, our suffering servant, and by that He found us straying sheep, and became the perfect Pastor of our souls. You’re the formerly straying sheep. He’s the shepherd, the pastor.