The Hidden Life of a Shepherd

0:10 Well, good afternoon. I am glad to see all of you and what a joy to get to be here along with my older brother, Alistair. or as we say in the South, my big brother. They've got nothing to do with size, but my big brother. And man, what an honor to get to be in this church and be with all of you. As I say, you're my tribe. You know, man, just to be with a bunch of preachers who love the Lord, love the word, believe in the power of the gospel. What an incredible joy. I encourage you to turn to 1 Peter chapter 5, and I'd like to just read to you the first five verses of 1 Peter 5. let's back up and read verse 19 of chapter 4 therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good

2:32 I can't read this without my mind going back to John 21. The author of these words is the same guy that Jesus there by a charcoal fire early on that Galilean morning says, Peter, do you love me?

2:58 Feed my sheep. feed my sheep. And now it's near the end of his life and as a much older, wiser man, he who has faithfully fed the sheep of God is now encouraging younger elders to do the same thing. Feed the Lord's sheep. You know, Peter identifies himself here as a fellow elder.

3:37 And it's the only time that word appears in all the New Testament. He's not just an elder, a fellow elder. He wants them to see he's one of them. But he appeals to them on the basis of two credentials. that he's a witness of Christ's sufferings and a partaker of the glory that is about to be revealed. I'm intrigued by the connection of these two things, suffering and glory. This has been something of a theme in 1 Peter all the way back in chapter 1 and verse 11. He talked about the prophets who were inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. So Peter clearly connects these two things, that the sufferings of Christ inevitably lead to the glory.

4:46 suffering and splendor held together. I think it's the same pattern you see in the book of Hebrews chapter 9 verse 28 that says, Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. Now, this is a great description of the ministry because your ministry, like your life, is shaped by these two vistas, this panoramic view of the redemptive work of God that is rooted in the sufferings of Christ and the glory that will be revealed. This is what we do. we are unveiling that to those that we preach to. We want them to see both of these things.

5:43 You know, I am rather proudly a baby boomer when it comes to music. I like our music. I, you know, yesterday when the team from Truth For Life picked me up at the airport, they had Steely Dan playing in the car. And I said, you know, I wonder if 50 years from now, anybody's going to be playing anything written today. I don't know. But I know we're still listening to music from the 70s. This is sort of my music. I like watching on YouTube reaction videos. Have you seen these? It's like, here's some Gen Z hip-hop artist listening for the first time to Steely Dan's Asia or someone who grew up on a steady diet of Taylor Swift or Doja Cat.

6:42 Listening, you know, I mean, Taylor Swift has all, it's the same song over and over. It's about a bad boyfriend. And when you watch someone have a reaction video to listening for the first time to Joni Mitchell's A Case of You, now that's a breakup song. It is achingly beautiful. I like watching someone who's never heard that before listen to it and go, wow, this is amazing. There's like hundreds of reaction videos to Asia by Steely Dan. I think I've watched them all. I just want to go, right? You see how great that is? So it's not enough to watch those videos. I subject my grandchildren to these. I want to see their reaction to this great music.

7:38 You know, someone who's never heard the boxer move to tears by the powerful melancholy of loneliness and poverty that it describes. It's so delightful to see somebody else react to the stuff that I've loved and appreciated for years. I think preaching is like that times a million. We have seen the sufferings of Christ and the glory that shall be revealed. And the privilege of preaching that to others, of opening the word and seeing their lives changed by it, to see their reaction to it, the beauty of a crucified Savior risen and coming again in glory to all who believe, there's simply nothing like it. And we get to do that. Don't discount the value, the beauty, the power of being able to preach to others and show them that you are a witness of the sufferings and the glory of Christ that is going to be revealed. And this is what we do. Seeing someone take in that suffering and that glory through the preached word of God is just incomparable. I want to encourage you that your ministry has to present both things because a ministry that only looks back to the cross misses the very purpose for which Christ died. He died to save us from sin, but he died for glory. But a ministry that focuses only on the future and what is going to happen and pie in the sky, by and by, but doesn't talk about the power of the gospel in this world, in this life.

9:33 It forgets what redemption costs and what it accomplishes now. And the hidden life that this passage calls elders to is only possible for a man who has let both truths shape him. So the hidden life that Peter implies here when he writes to these elders is the life of a shepherd proven not only by how visibly he leads, but what quietly governs him when no one else is looking. Whose flock he believes it is, his motive, his appetite, and his method. because what you are in secret is what you are.

10:26 It's not about what people say or what they see or what they think. It's about who you are before God, what the power of his suffering and his glory has done in your life. This is what Peter is telling them. So he tells them, I think, first of all, he says, you need to shepherd God's flock, not your own. He's very careful to tell them, shepherd the flock of God. The flock belongs to God. It doesn't belong to the elder. You know, the moment a shepherd starts speaking of my church, my ministry, my people in a possessive way rather than in a way that denotes stewardship, then this clause has already been abandoned. And I want to caution you, the longer you stay in one place, which I'm for, I think that should be the goal. Find a place where you can plant your life and stay there.

11:28 But the longer you are someplace, the easier it is to lapse into that way of thinking that it belongs to you, that it's been shaped by you. And that's the great temptation against which Peter warns them. He says, shepherd the flock of God that is among you. It's not a flock of God that is beneath you.

11:56 And it's not the flock of God that is above you. It reminds me here, this whole text reminds me of Paul's farewell speech to the Ephesian elders, because he tells them, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock of God in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. We really are under shepherds. We serve the chief shepherd. And most preachers, we do a far better job of pastoring the church of God that is with somebody else than we do our own. We cast our eyes on the bigger church, the church with a higher profile, the church with better resources, the church with, oh, I don't know, a better praise band than you've got, more powerful fog machines?

12:59 Man, if I could preach with fog. I mean, that's the definition of the Shekinah glory, right? Well, you know, we're in a time where we're always looking at ourselves through the eyes of others. I mean, everything now is show business. I mean, cooking, walking your dog, cleaning your gutters, taking your kids to soccer practice. Sometimes it seems like we don't know how to shepherd unless someone is posting it. I mean, imagine Jesus, the night of the Last Supper, posting a picture of him washing Peter's feet.

13:53 Hey, this is me being a servant. But this is our era. This is the way we think. This is the temptation, the challenge that Peter's warning us. No, shepherd the flock of God that is among you. This passage binds together the three New Testament words for the office.

14:17 Presbuteros is the noun. The other two, the word for shepherd and overseer, are in verbal forms here. But this and the Acts 20 passage where Paul addresses the Ephesian elders are the two places where some form of all three of those words are used. Shepherd, overseer, and elder. And when Paul here says, you shepherd the flock of God that is among you, giving oversight, exercising oversight, it's a participle. It's used elsewhere in the book of Hebrews 12, verse 15, where there it's translated, see to it. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. That's what oversight is.

15:13 Sometimes we think of oversight as like it's management. Like somehow it implies that we're calling the shots. Certainly there's an element of authority in this office, but think about that passage in Hebrews. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. I mean, an elder is a watchman. Our job is to see to it. We're a watchman against bitterness. We're not a manager of operation. You know, and it's hard to see that no root of bitterness springs up in the congregation when one has arisen in your own heart because you think God has put you in some place that is less than you deserve or not as great as you should get when the results aren't coming like you think they should. And there's a root of bitterness that has sprung up in your own heart. It's hard to see to it, to exercise oversight over them in the flock of God. It's possible for us to love the idea of the church more than just the church itself, the church that God gave us. To shepherd a congregation you barely know from a pulpit that you regard as only a stepping stone to somewhere bigger is a grave danger in the ministry.

16:46 But on the other hand, a shepherd can stay faithfully with the right flock and still shepherd it wrongly. That's a matter of the heart that no one else can see. That's an issue of motive. And boy, Peter gets right to it. Because now he's going to give us really three tests. First one, he says, you've got to shepherd willingly, not under compulsion. Now this verb, to shepherd, it's decisive. It's not a suggestion of temperament. It's not an issue of your personality. Notice the contrast between you don't do this under compulsion on the one hand versus willingly on the other.

17:32 Peter's warning is that the same visible act of shepherding can be either duty performed or love offered. It can be duty done perfunctorily or devotion offered worshipfully. The behavior looks identical from the outside, but the root, the heart issue is completely opposite. You gotta ask yourself, would you still be doing this when the platform, the applause, the expectation, the salary disappears? Would you do it for less money? Would you do it when there's no response? Now, make no mistake. Willingness is not the absence of struggle. God calls some people against their natural inclination, inclination against their natural preference. I think of Jeremiah. I mean, he called Jeremiah to preach in a time when nobody was going to listen. He told him nobody's going to listen.

18:41 And Jeremiah wanted to quit, but he could not because there was a fire in his bones. I think of Jonah, who God had to change his will. But when you make that settled, persistent choice to obey in spite of and underneath the struggle. That's what Peter's talking about. Offering it to the Lord willingly because of his worth, not because of your fulfillment. You've got to guard against loving the idea of pastoring more than the labor of pastoring. You've got to guard against loving the office without loving the people. Think of it like this. I think about a flower that grows somewhere in some greenhouse and it is cut and put in a bouquet that is put in the White House. It is a prominent, beautiful bouquet there to be pleasing to important eyes.

19:48 there's another flower that grows in some mountain meadow in a clearing in the middle of a forest and no human eye ever sees it it grows completely and only for the glory and the gaze of God both are at his pleasure and both are for his glory would you be content to be either one of those? Is it enough for you to bloom solely for the pleasure and the glory of God? Unappreciated, unseen, unknown, perhaps even unloved by anyone else. But you find joy in God's delight in you. but willingness alone can still be corrupted by what it hopes to get out of the flock.

20:51 And I think this is the second test. Peter says you've got to shepherd eagerly, not for shameful gain. Now, he doesn't say not for any gain. Godliness with contentment is great gain. You can have gain, but he says for shameful gain. It's a striking compound word. Shame profitly. that you have used the office to get a benefit that you ought not get. The gain itself is not always the sin. The shame is in what the flock became a means to, that your shepherding was simply to get you some thrill, to get you some platform, to get you some delight. And it's not just money. Frankly, I always tell preachers, if you got into the ministry for money, you're just stupid. There's not much money in the ministry. There's a lot of other things you could more easily go into if money is your end game. But if you widen this out beyond just money, the gain can be being needed, being deferred to, being the one everybody comes to. You get the rush from people being dependent on you. Those are just as purchasable from a flock as a paycheck and just as corrupting because it's not rooted in the glory of God. You're not doing it for the pleasure of God. And he says, you do it instead of shame profitably, you do it eagerly. Now this word shares a root with the Spirit's eagerness against our flesh's weakness. In Matthew 26, 41, Peter here's speaking about spiritual appetite, not personality type. I think we can easily get confused on this that we think, I hear pastors all the time will say to me, especially like in my preaching classes, when I talk to them about you need to change some things and the way you do

23:01 this, guys will say to me, you know, that's just not who I am. The minute they say that, they get my speech. Now here's my speech. Oh, listen, personality is not an excuse for anything. In fact, your personality is not only not an excuse, it's the problem. sanctification is the process by which the Holy Spirit overcomes your personality I mean personality doesn't work on your job you know if you don't you don't take care of finances by on time and you don't send out people's paychecks on time you go oh I'm sorry you know my personality I'm just a procrastinator and they go oh in that case we get it it's all right That's who you are.

23:56 It doesn't work with your wife. Oh, you know, sorry about leaving my underwear in the floor all the time. That's just who I am. She goes, oh, I find it charming. It doesn't happen like that. your shepherding has to be shaped by the Spirit of God changing you, transforming you inwardly, that hidden part of you, that heart issue that desires to honor God in the way you do it, the manner you do it, the motive with which you do it. And what is the flock quietly supplying you significance, deference, and audience that tempts you to stop noticing that you're collecting from them, that that's really your motive. It's possible to think more about how others perceive what you do than about what God does in you and through you and in spite of you. Because ultimately, this is not an issue of our ability nor our personality. It's an issue of God working in us and through us. In 1975, in Cologne, Germany, there was a 17-year-old girl named Vera Brandes who wanted to become a concert promoter. And to this end, she got the Cologne opera house to allow her to use the facility late one night. After the opera had already concluded, she booked the facility for an 1130 concert. And she booked a brilliant young American jazz pianist named Keith Jarrett for this strange late night concert that would begin at 1130.

25:56 And Jarrett agreed to it, but he gave her a few riders along with a contract. The main one being that he had to perform only on a Bosendorfer grand piano and a few other things, and she said she would take care of all that. And the day of the concert, Jarrett and his manager that traveled with him, they drove like an eight-hour trip. He hadn't slept in two days. his back was killing him. He had to stop repeatedly and get out of the car. And he didn't know if he could go through with the concert that night. When they get there, they discovered that after the opera was over, the crew that had the instructions to bring the Bosendorfer piano in there got the wrong piano. They got an old practice piano from down in the basement of the opera house, and they put it in there. And it's time for the concert. He's in there for the warmup and he notices, this is a terrible piano. It's a Bosendorfer and that's the only thing right. The keys would stick.

27:02 The treble was weak. The pedal stuck. And he just said, I can't play on this. And he stormed out. Vera Brandes sees her career going up. She's only 17 years old. She's in overhead. She goes with him they eat at a delicatessen and she she begs him please to play and you've come all this way I've got an audience that's going to be here they bought tickets do what you can and he says okay remember I did this for you and that night at 11 30 he goes on and he he has to take into account the keys that don't work. And so he changed his style on the fly. He focused on the middle register using rolling, repetitive, hypnotic vamps and a heavy rhythmic pulse with his left hand. And he would sometimes get up off the stool and he had to hit it real hard because it was such a a weak sound, and he had to get sound out of it.

28:10 They gave instructions that night to record the concert in case he wanted to sue her later. and ECM Records got the 66-minute recording of the concert, and it became the greatest-selling piano album in history. If you listen to it, it is an incredible work of art, as Keith Jarrett just improvises and plays 66 minutes without stopping around broken keys and a stuck pedal. God isn't going to use you because you're such a great instrument. whatever he does, he's doing in spite of you and around you, even though through you. but he's the artist.

29:13 It isn't you. We're broken and imperfect instruments, but we trust our great composer to do something that shows his suffering and the glory that's going to be revealed. But a pure motive and a clean appetite still have to be lived out in method. And here's where most shepherds are tempted hardest. Peter says, you've got to lead by becoming an example, not by lording it over the flock. You know, the word here, lording it over, occurs one other time in the New Testament. Jesus used this word because he said, the Gentiles lord it over their subjects. I think Peter is quoting Jesus' diagnosis of worldly power at these elders who are tempted to lead God's flock like that.

30:16 He says, no, you're to become the type, the pattern, the mold that they follow. your flock will not necessarily hear primarily your words, but they'll watch your life to see whether or not they can trust your words. It might be that apart from the word of God itself, the greatest source of credibility you have is your marriage. Will you speak to people? Will you parent your children? people are watching your life. And Peter says, this is precisely the way you should lead them. I mean, the New Testament gives your church the right to examine your life. Frankly, I have grown weary of pastors and their wives complaining about life in the fishbowl.

31:15 that's how you lead. That is one of your primary tools. Discipleship is inviting people to come into your life and watch you do this. Be you followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. You don't get some fictitious zone of privacy. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. Jesus, well, my wife is perhaps the greatest theologian I know. She says stuff that just blew me away. She was sitting up in my study one day. I was busily working on a sermon. She'll bring her computer up and sit on the couch in my study. We call it being in each other's orbit without being each other's space.

32:12 When we just, you know, we've got stuff to do, but we still like being in the same room together. And so she was sitting there and I'm steady. And suddenly she pipes up and she said, Satan is a profound incrementalist. I went, what? She said, Satan is a profound incrementalist. How do I say the opposite of that about Jesus? I'm thinking about her question, her request to me, and I'm also thinking about the theological accuracy of her statement. And I said, well, Jesus is a perfect absolutist. She said, that's it. Satan is a profound incrementalist. Jesus is a perfect absolutist.

32:59 It's like those two sentences opened up a whole new world to me. I don't know why that had never occurred to me. Satan never asks you for the whole ball of wax. Never. He always asks you for a small thing. You know, hey, Eve, just one bite of the fruit. That's all. Hey, Elijah, just one afternoon underneath that juniper tree. David, one more look. Just one more. That's all he asks. Jesus, on the other hand, never asked for a small thing. He never asked for a portion. He demands all. He says, take up your cross. What do you do with the cross? You die. Come, be my disciple. Forsake all.

33:53 If you even look back, you're not fit for the kingdom of heaven. I mean, the rich young ruler goes away sorrowing, And Jesus doesn't say, hey, let's negotiate this. Let's lower the standard for a moment. Let's see if we can maybe come to an understanding. No, you come to Jesus with everything. You give him your all because he's worthy of all. He's not willing to take a portion.

34:22 And when you understand that, that you're giving your life to this ministry, that your whole life goes into that sermon. Someone says, how long do you spend preparing a sermon for Sunday morning? Your answer is your entire life. Your life goes into your preaching. Your life goes into your shepherding. You become a type, a pattern, a model for them. That's what Peter says. You know, I had a pastor friend when I was a young preacher who told me, his advice to me was don't get close to your people. He said, because you get close to them, they'll lose respect for you. Even as a really young preacher in my 20s, that didn't sound right. I remember thinking, you know, if they get close to me and lose respect for me, that's on me.

35:17 That's a problem. It should be that the closer they get to me, the more they see in me, the greater their respect for me. I mean, they're going to say I'm broken and fallen, but I want them to see that my passion above everything else is to bring glory and honor to Christ. See, you cannot correct in the flock what you are unwilling to let God correct in you first. Because your people are watching the pattern. They're not grading your sermon.

35:48 They're watching your life. And it's conceivable that you care more about how you are treated than how you obey him. Now, none of this, whose flock it is, what motivates you or what you're after, is sustainable by your willpower alone. It's sustainable only by remembering who the flock actually belongs to.

36:14 It's his. So why do it at all? because, he said, because as God would have you, because God would have us lead like Jesus, who was willing to lay aside his glory, eager to do the will of him who sent him, an example of obedience even unto death. You know, in a culture that trades in platforms and followers, it's easy for us to lose sight that we really live for an audience of one.

36:49 You know, Peter coins a word here that exists nowhere else in Scripture when he calls Jesus the archipoimene, the chief shepherd. He adds a new word because the majesty of Christ doesn't fit the old vocabulary for shepherds. Ezekiel's 34, promised shepherd, John 10's good shepherd who lays down his life, Jesus in John 21, who recommissions Peter to feed his sheep. It's like Peter puts all these together and says, yes, he's the chief shepherd. And when you shepherd his flock, when you do it in these ways, then your reward is an unfading crown of glory. That's unlike anything else you're going to get in this life.

37:45 I think he's deliberately set this against, you know, in Paul's day when you won, like an Olympic race, you got a laurel wreath. Well, that laurel wreath is going to dry up and crumble and blow away. But Jesus is offering you an unfading crown of glory. Every crown the world knows how to give is already dying the moment it's placed on your head. But not this one. So he says, clothe yourselves with humility. The word here pictures a servant's apron tied on tightly for service. very possibly the same kind of towel Peter watched Jesus tie on in John 13.

38:40 And, you know, humility is not a mood. It's not a moment. It's a garment deliberately put on and knotted. It does not come untied under pressure. And then he quotes Proverbs 3.34. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Every one of these tests, whose flock it is, what motive you have, the appetite you have for it, what method you use, it's really just one test wearing four different costumes. and are you going to do it with pride or humility? The shepherd who had every right to the crown reached for a towel instead.

39:37 And every under shepherd who wants the crown that he's holding will have to reach for the same towel first. When I was in my 20s, when I was 20 years old, I was called to serve as the minister of music and youth at the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. I had only finished my sophomore year at Michigan State when, you know, my dad had a conversation with me. He said, you can do that. I said, there's no way they're going to hire a 20-year-old to do that job. Dad said, you could do that. And he encouraged me to call the pastor at that church and just ask his permission to apply. I did that. The pastor said, well, sure there's no harm in you sending a resume in. Long story short, I ended up getting the job. It was crazy to give that job to a 20-year-old, but I got it. And everything else in my life came out of that. Everything else in my life came out of that conversation with my dad saying, you can do that. My first day there at Ashland Avenue. I met Tanya. We went out on a date. 13 days later, bought the rings. That's another story.

40:53 You know, we've been married 45 years. I mean, everything else in my life, literally, I don't know who I'd be if that had not happened. As a young 20-year-old on the staff of Brother Ross Range there at Ashland Avenue, I heard a country preacher named Roy Humble preach a sermon on pouring water on Elijah's hands.

41:17 He just read that text when Elisha comes up after Elijah's been caught up to heaven and I think the sons of the prophets see him and they say, oh, here comes Elisha, that guy who poured water on Elijah's hands. And Roy Humble preached this sermon on, you know, Elisha just obeyed God. He was just a servant and he ended up with a double portion of Elijah's spirit.

41:45 And he just basically said, you do that. You trust the Lord in humility. You serve. The Lord will take care of you in due time. He'll give you leadership. In my early 20s, I bought into that. I just said, I'm going to do that. and I made it my goal to serve my pastor and just be a blessing to him. He was already in his 60s when I went on his staff and I thought, man, I'm going to try and help him stretch out his ministry as long as he can do this and wants to do that. And the Lord gave me seven years with him. I left to go to seminary and after three years in seminary, Brother Rains did retire and in his resignation to the church, He recommended to them that they call me as pastor, and they called me back. And I pastored the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church, and from there I went to Southern Seminary.

42:44 After pastoring there seven years, I learned the importance of just serving in humility. The Lord kept his word to me. 2015, I brought a young man on staff at Buck Run. He was one of my students at Southern Seminary, and I needed someone to be an assistant to me, sort of take care of my travel details and, you know, just save me time. If my car needed the oil changed, I didn't want to take the time to do that. You're going to do that. And I got this young man, and I told him, I said, look, when I was a 20-year-old, I heard this old country preacher preach this sermon pouring water on Elijah's hands. I did it. Lord bless me. I'm just telling you, you do that. You just live like that. And trust me, the Lord will take care of you. He's now my pastor.

43:41 and he's here at this conference a few weeks ago he texted me hey i'm going to basics and he said uh anything you need i'm while there i'm your guy i'll be your body guy and though he's my pastor this week last night he texted me i'm going to the store you need anything? I said, yeah, bring me some Pepsi Zeros. He brought me Pepsi Zero sugar. This morning, he drove me here. You know what? The church has grown since I stepped down as pastor under his leadership. It's bigger than it was when I was pastor. I'm so happy about that. He is my shepherd. I was once his.

44:35 I'm just telling you, clothe yourself with humility. Because God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble. What in your ministry is beneath you? Do that. Do that thing. because we serve a Savior who left the glories of heaven and came to suffer. but his glory is going to be revealed. he humbled himself and God has exalted him and given him the name that is above every name.

45:29 That's the pattern of Jesus. Make it your pattern too. Father, I pray that you would just be glorified in us that our simple prayer Thank you. might be that thing, that you just bring glory to the Lord Jesus through us. that no task will be beneath us? that no task we do will be in our strength, but that all will be through the power of your Spirit and to your glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.