Last week, I spoke about double honor and how the elders that rule well, especially those who work hard at the preaching and teaching are to be treated, both the honor in which they are to be treated in terms of respect, but also in terms of just the honor and esteem that you are to give to them. We read from, for example, 1 Thessalonians 5.12, where Paul says, but we request 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. It is God's will that in the household of God, those who labor hard at the preaching and teaching are to be especially honored. And that honor is in how you treat them, but also we tried to show it's in how you provide for them. And as we read from Galatians in the sixth chapter, and whether it be John Cotton or John Owen or even our own Confession, they all connect Galatians chapter six. Verses 6 through 10 as a unit, and not individual statements like they have maybe in the Proverbs. And there, the one who was taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him. Then there's this warning, which is connected to the verse six. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, this will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, and the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially those who are of the household of faith. And this is another way in which double honor is to be communicated to those who labor hard in the preaching and the teaching of the Word of God. The word, the labor hard, diligently, is a word that means to work to exhaustion. Paul will, for example, use the language In the book of Colossians, he says, we proclaim him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose, I labor, striving according to the mighty works that works mightily within me. Here, Paul is laboring, same idea as in 1 Peter. 517, this laboring, working hard to exhaustion and teaching the word. Paul will say in Acts that the blood of no man is on his head because he taught from house to house for three years. He taught the whole counsel of God. He brought these things to the people. And he tells the elders of Ephesus that you must do the same. You must be about this and be on guard for the flock that God has purchased with his own blood. That is the responsibility and the duty of those who are the teachers of the word. And yet Paul says here in Galatians that in response to that, to share all good things with the one who teaches and that God is not mocked. and how you treat and value those who God has appointed and whom you have appointed is going to have a direct effect on your life. You honor and double honor those who labor hard in you in teaching the word, then God will bless you with things. And if you withhold that, both in the terms of the esteeming and honoring or the financially providing, then it will also be difficult for you. And it's interesting to me, and I don't know how much to make of all of this, and it's hard to be able to track down hard numbers, but from what sources I could look at, it's estimated right now in America that every week there's 100 to 200 churches that are closing across our country. And it's estimated that over 3,000 pastors leave the ministry every year. And according to different research groups, whether it be Research Lifeway or the Barna Group, the primary reasons for the departure of pastors who either are leaving or considering leaving the ministry, the number one reason was the stress of their job. The second one was the feelings of loneliness and isolation. And I don't know that that's all true or not, but just this week I was told that the, I believe it was the URC, has 20 churches, 19 or 20 churches, that they can't find pastors for. I can't document this, but I was also told that one of our own seminaries allegedly has 500 students in it to get some type of advanced theological degree. Only one of them wants to be a pastor, which makes me wonder why do you call it a seminary? It's a Bible school. But why do people not want to go into the ministry? Why do so many who are in the ministry want to get out of the ministry? Why are there so many churches closing? And there is a tremendous stress and even a sense of loneliness. Remember what Paul will say in terms of his own ministry and in terms of in 2 Corinthians 11 and how he says that the, he says, I was being, in terms of his own thing, how he was beaten and imprisoned and left without food, left without opportunity, as he says in 2 Corinthians 11, he says, Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes, three times I was beaten with rods, once stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, and night and day I spent in the deep. I have been in frequent journeys and dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the cities, dangers in the sea, dangers amongst false brethren. I have labored in hardship throughout many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure." Those are all things I can say pretty much I haven't experienced. But then he makes this statement in contrast to all of this, okay? He just made that long list, but in contrast, He says in verse 28, apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. Now, I'm certain that I've never experienced that the way the Apostle Paul has, but I think every pastor who's worth anything And apparently from what the research is, there's a lot of pastors who feel that very pressure enough so that they give up being pastors. In terms of the feelings of loneliness and isolation, I definitely can feel that. I know things about some of you that I'm not able to say to anyone else, including to my own wife. I've had over 40 years things done to me and said to me that I've never been able to tell anybody else, including my own wife. And you just have to take that as part of the job. I remember hunting with a couple of young pastors and they were going on and on about their congregations. And they went on for quite some time about, in my church they do this, in my church they say that, in my church the people act this way and they act that way. feeling much abused. So we sat there on the side of the hill, hoping for some beautiful elk to come along. And after listening to them for quite a while, I just turned to them and said, gentlemen, welcome to the ministry. What did you think you were signing up for? And I don't say all that to make any of you feel bad for me or have pity on me or anyone else. But I say that to understand Paul is not talking about double honor simply because he's in the ministry and he's looking out for his other fellow ministers. Oh, by the way, you gotta really take care of these guys. I'm one of them, help them out. I got their back. It's not what it is. Again, as he's told us in 1 Timothy, this is how we are to live in the household of God. 2 Timothy 3.15, where he tells us, I've written these things that you might know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God. The struggles of what it means to be a pastor are great. And to be honest with you, and as I've reflected on, especially this last year, as we've gone through the ecclesiology and maybe it'd be great to have a time where we could all sit and talk about what we've learned or not. But one of the things that I've learned in terms of my understanding of being a pastor, just in the last year, if I had known these things when I was in Bible college or seminary, I've stopped and I pondered, would I have agreed to do this? I'm not talking about the things I've been through, but the responsibilities I have. Because when I, I remember my motive for going into the ministry was I get to tell people about Jesus. I get to help people understand the word of God. And that's correct, and that's true. But that's just the surface. And I would like to offer this as a statement that I cannot prove. And I understand that it's a violation of logic to take a problem and reduce it down to one particular cause. You got a complex problem, it probably has a complex reasons for it. But I think that the reason why so many men leave the ministry, why so many churches are closing and why so many pastors feel the stress and the isolation of their calling is a Christological problem that affects the whole church. You say, well, how is that a Christological problem and not an ecclesiastical problem? in part because we don't value what Christ has appointed in terms of how he is building his church. And as I have said and confessed with you on our journey through the things that we've been reading, I never remember being taught anywhere along the line the keys of the kingdom and the key of faith or knowledge or the key of order or the key of authority. I can't say that that's been a dominating theme in my teaching or application. And therefore, the congregations that God has allowed me to serve, it's not been clear to them, as I think all of you would admit, no matter how old you are in the Lord, how often have you thought about and sought to exercise the key of order in your own life or in the life of the body? And so as Jesus has promised us in Matthew 16 that I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. We do not access that power and authority in any serious way. We will give intellectual assent to it. But in the way that we live, in terms of exercising the key of order on your behalf, or the key of authority on my behalf, and the trying, intentionally saying, are we really doing things according to the mind of Christ? The answer would be no, we are not. As I tried to show last week from 1 Corinthians 9, the mind of Christ The mind of Christ is that those who work according to the gospel are to gain their earning from the gospel. Here is the scripture, 1 Corinthians 9.14. So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel. The Lord directed, the Lord commanded. What does that mean? As we saw last week, Paul says in verse four of that same chapter, Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who do not have the right to refrain from working? And the idea of working there is not that the life of Paul was, I'm just gonna sit around the pool and drink Mai Tais and work on my melanoma. but that he'd be working hard in the teaching and the instructing of the word of God to the people of God, freed from having any concern in terms of the daily issues. And if we aren't building our church according to the mind of Christ, any church, how is it that we can ask or expect the blessing of God? How is it that we can claim the power of God to protect us? As I suggested last week, we become like those who mock God. And I'm pretty sure mocking God doesn't bring forth blessings from God. And so we can take this all rather theoretical and say, okay, whatever, or we can take it to heart and say, okay, Jesus is building his church and he will not fail. And the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church that he builds. Are we, in fact, honestly following his pattern? I'd like you to grab your hymnal and turn to the back. I want to just review a couple things before I get back to the text, and that's where I plan to go. But I just want to wave a reminder, we taught through these things just recently, this last year. Turn in the back of your hymnal to page 684, where we have the Baptist Confession of Faith, Community Baptist Church, professes to be a full-subscription church. So these would be things that would need to be considered as part of how we live. On page 684, the 26th chapter of the church, paragraph 4 says, the Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church in whom, by the appointment of the Father, all power for calling, institution, order, or governance of the church is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner. And neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense be the head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, the son of perdition that exalts himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God, whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. So here we learn that the Father has given all power and authority to Christ to call and order his church. And while some might and sometimes it's often debated, can they really say that the Pope is the Antichrist? I would suggest to you the meaning of that paragraph is not really about the Pope, it's about Christ and anyone who seeks to say, I have a better way of doing it than Christ does. Whether they explicitly or implicitly suggest that, they in fact are opposing the power and authority of Christ. Or, as the words of Galatians 6-7, they become mockers. In the next paragraph, paragraph five, in the execution of this power, the power that the father gave to the son, in the execution of this power where he is so entrusted, the Lord Jesus calls out of the world unto himself through the ministry of his word and by his spirit, those that were given unto him by his father, that they may walk before him in all the ways of obedience, which he has prescribed to them in his word. Those thus called, he commanded to walk together in particular societies or churches for the mutual edification and due performance of the public worship which he required of them in the world. So the fact that Jesus has been given the power, it's not that he just kind of says, okay, I'm going to start a church. He's going to do some really cool things for the first 28 chapters of the book of Acts. I've done my part, now I'm gonna sit back and kind of let everybody else pick up their part and do their thing. No, he is today still exercising the same power and calling out of the world through the ministry of his word and spirit, those that the father has given to him. And until that number is full, that all of the elect, all of the redeemed have been brought into the church, he will continue to exercise his power and authority. Skipping down to paragraph seven, where is that power exercised? And this is why we are Baptists and not Presbyterians, Catholics, Lutherans, or in many cases, evangelicals who don't even acknowledge the power of Christ in any real practical sense. Paragraph seven, where does the power of Christ manifest itself? To each of these churches thus gathered according to his mind declared in his word, he has given all that power and authority which in any way needful for the carrying out in the order and worship and discipline which he has instituted for them to observe with commands and rules for the do and right exercising and executing of that power. It's in the local church That the very power and authority the father has given to his son is in this world being manifested through the preaching of the word and the work of the spirit. It is in the local church that that power was being and is being manifested to the degree that the local church is building its ministry according to the mind of Christ. It's not in a pope. It's not in a national bishop, i.e. Anglicanism. It's not in some Presbyterian senate of elders who have nothing to do with a particular local church. That power and authority is in the local church. And that power, as we've learned in the study of the keys of the kingdom, is manifested here in us at Community Baptist in at least two ways, probably more, but at least two broad ways, in your proper use of the key of order and the elders' proper use of the key of authority. And when those things are being done, then we know that we are doing things according to the mind of Christ. And hence, we can then claim the power and divine protection of Christ. I know I've told you this illustration, I think it applies here, but I knew a guy who was a union electrician, worked at the building of a sports arena in the San Jose area, and he was telling me the story that one guy in the union would show up every morning, open up his toolbox, rearrange the tools, open and close some drawers, and then go home. So in this massive sports arena, there's hundreds of men working every day. He showed up, clocked in, opened up his tool chest like he was there, went home, came back about quitting time, closed up his tool chest, and collect his paycheck. It went on for months. Was he actually doing any work? No. Was he showing up? Yes. And once it was discovered, They honored him, gave him a promotion, right? No, they fired him on the spot. Get your tools and get out of here. And so it is incumbent upon you and the officers to be doing the ministry of Community Baptist Church according to the mind of Christ. Then one last thing out of our confession, and we'll move on, is paragraph eight. And this paragraph, I think, pulls all that we've said so far together. A particular church, that means local church, gathered and completely organized according to the mind of the elders, right? Is that what it says? You're right, it doesn't say that. It says according to the mind of the congregation, right? No, it's not what it says either, is it? Organized according to the mind of Christ, consists of officers and members, and officers appointed by Christ to be chosen and set apart to the church, so called and gathered, for the particular administration and ordinances and, notice this, the execution of power or duty which he entrusts in them or calls them to be continued to the end of the world are bishops, elders, and deacons. And he goes on in the next paragraph to remind us that those who have been set apart to exercise the power and duty in terms of being officers are set apart by the congregation. So in other words, when it comes to extending double honor to the man who labors hard in the preaching and teaching of the word. What's happening in reality is the father has given all power and authority to a son to call and organize his church. Christ, in the exercising of that power, calls out of the world, out of the dominion of darkness, into the kingdom of his own. Those whom the father has given him, In the continued exercising of that power and authority, he organizes these local churches and he exercises that power and authority in the local church. And he does so when the local church, recognizing that certain men have been uniquely gifted and equipped by the Holy Spirit to function as an officer, a deacon, or an elder, and it is by the recognition of the congregation that these things are true, they, given the key of order, will now order the life of the church by saying, these people are the congregation. These people, being set aside by the congregation, having recognized what Christ and the Spirit have done in their life, say, these are the elders and the deacons. In doing so, they are, in fact, exercising the power and authority of Christ. So, in other words, On the one side, you have no right or authority to put any man into ministry as a deacon or an elder who you are not thoroughly persuaded that the power and authority of Christ rests on him for the fulfillment of that ministry. And on the other hand, no man is to be an elder or a deacon who the congregation has not thoroughly vetted and said, we recognize that man is gifted. and set apart by Christ that Christ might exercise his power and authority in this local congregation. So now that you have recognized this man as gifted by Christ and the Holy Spirit for the purpose of Jesus using his authority and power to build a church according to his mind and will, What would you do? How would you treat the man that Christ has set aside for doing that? Jesus says, double honor. I don't like the guy who preaches. He always has these funny jokes, but they're not funny. I don't like his personality. I don't like the way he preaches. I don't like his style. I don't like this. I don't like that. I remember the first time I was convicted of that in my life. I've told you this story. I was in seminary, and my pastor, Pastor Dick Anderson, had a man who was, if I told you his name, you would know. Most of you know. If you're my age, you definitely would know. who was the founder and leader of a very prominent parachurch organization that was committed to evangelism, and had this man come preach to us one Sunday morning. And I really don't know what he said. I have no recollection, whatever. All I know is I couldn't hear a word he said because he was the most boring, inarticulate, preacher, teacher I had ever heard. It wasn't that his theology was bad, it may or may not have been, I don't know what he said. All I knew is this guy doesn't know how to speak, and it was like those, back when we had chalkboards and fingers going across those, it just like, I can't. And that very day, God convicted me and said, you don't even know if the word of God was preached. All you could do was evaluate the speaker and you didn't think he had anything to say. God has made the church powerful because he's made Christ powerful. And this is why I say it's a Christological problem Jesus is building his church. He is exercising his power and authority. If we don't look at the church, we don't treat the church, we don't exercise the things that Christ has given to us in the church, the keys of order and authority, and if we do not treat those that Christ has set apart according to the mind of Christ, then it is Christ that we are rejecting. We, in fact, are anti-Christ at that point. Our bad ecclesiology is proof that we have bad Christology. Jesus gave to the congregation the keys of order, Cotton says, to the elders. He gave them the key of authority or rule. The elders of the church have been given the authority is a moral power and a superior order for the binding and releasing, and inferior in the point of subjection. Now, not superior and inferior in terms of the pastor or the elder, somehow he's above you guys, not that kind of. But he is responsible for the opening and the closing of the gates of heaven. That's a higher responsibility than simply the responsibility of ordering the life in the church, which has been given to everyone, and the recognizing that this man has been gifted, that's been given to everyone. Now that that has been given, there's a next step up in responsibility and authority. In Matthew 16, the keys of the kingdom were first given to Peter and later given to all the apostles for the opening and closing, the binding and loosing. The elders do not have the authority to do that unilaterally. They must do it in conjunction with the congregation. but the congregation does not have the authority to do so. They have the authority to, in agreement with the elders, the elders come and we say that this man is either a believer or not a believer, and you have to affirm either in accepting or rejecting this man as a believer or an unbeliever. Together we have, we do this, but it is the elder's responsibility, the key of order, to open and to close the door of heaven in conjunction with the ministry and the authority of the church. That's a heavy duty thing. As I said earlier, when I was young and wanting to go in the ministry, I just thought, I'm gonna teach the Bible, it's gonna be great. I'm gonna help people know about Jesus. How cool is that? And get paid for it. What a wonderful opportunity. If I knew what I know now, I might have said, I might take another job. Remember the first time I had to look into the eyes of a man who was unrepentant, who was a professing believer, but who had come to the elders and said that he was renouncing Christ. And had to say to him, you understand. that if you go through with this on the basis of Hebrews 6, likely there will never be an opportunity again for you to be forgiven of your sins. In my own personal life, the only thing that ever came close to that moment, close, was I stood at the nursing home And the nurse said, asked me, do you want us to move just a pallet of care for your father? Knowing that the very next words that would come out of my mouth would render certain the death of my father. That's the closest it ever came to feeling the weight of looking into that young man's eyes and say, do you understand? But that's my job. That's my responsibility. It's also my job to stand or sit in my office. I've had to do this with people who are deathly afraid that though they believe in Jesus, they are going to hell because they're not one of the elect and have to argue with them. No. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are one of the elect. But realizing all along this isn't an intellectual problem. Okay, pastor, I guess I am one. You told me I'm one of the elect. Good enough, I must be one of the elect. It doesn't work that way, does it? Or to have to sit in a room and take the wrath of a mom whose son is impregnating women, who was doing steroids for sports and got off the steroids because that was interfering with his impregnating women, as a teenage boy in high school? Am I warning him that he's not a believer? And his mom was mad with me, as all mad could be, because she was there when her little boy asked Jesus into her heart when he was in the fourth grade. Do we believe that Christ is in fact with his power and authority building his church all around the world, and he is so also doing that exactly the same way here at Community Baptist Church? Do we believe that like every other true church in the world, that the most powerful place on the face of the earth is here right now in this room because of what we are? And because the power and authority of Christ is being exercised right now? Do you believe that? Are we willing to live in light of that? And to have a high and exalted view of Jesus Christ will be evidenced in part by having a high and exalted view of the church that he is building, because the church is his bride, the church is his lover, the church is the apple of his eye, if you will, the seed of his affections. He loves the church. He gave himself for the church to wash her with water and the word that he might present the church to himself in all of her glory and honor without spot or wrinkle. The church, not to love the church is not to love Christ. To diminish the church is to diminish Christ. To build the church according to the mind of the elders, or according to the mind of the congregation, or according to the mind of the culture, according to the time of the season, is to diminish Christ. So it is God's will that the elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. Now, he's gonna talk, and we'll get to it, Lord willing, next week. Some elders who are not worthy of honor, verse 20, but we'll get to that next week, Lord willing. But the thing that we need to do is, do we, as Jesus affirms, believe that those who are appointed by him, recognized not of themselves, but by the church, worthy of that honor, whether it be in terms of their esteem or their provisions. Paul says in verse 21, including both how the honorable elders are to be dealt with and the dishonorable elders are to be dealt with, he says, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ and of his chosen angels to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality. The Apostle Paul were here, he was our guest speaker, and we told him what we've been doing the last year in terms of what we've studied. He might say to us, verse 21, what's your view of the church? What's your view of Christ? How are we to then live? This isn't a game, right? It's not what you tell your children when you're sharing the gospel. This isn't a game, son or daughter. Do we really believe that Jesus is actively here exercising his authority? Do we really believe that He has given to the congregation the responsibility to rightly handle that very power of Almighty God for the building of the church? Do we really believe that He's appointed certain officers? by the calling out of the Holy Spirit and recognized by the congregation itself that these men have been given the responsibility to exercise that power and authority of Christ himself for the opening and closing of doors of heaven, the saving and the damning of souls. As uncomfortable as I might be at this point in my life going, I'm a minister, probably each one of us ought to be uncomfortable just for being a member. There's a high calling. Colossians 1.13, He has taken us, rescued us, delivered us from the dominion, the authority of darkness, and placed us in the kingdom of the beloved Son in whom we have redemption. The forgiveness of sins, the kingdom of the beloved Son. Not the democracy of the beloved son. The kingdom. I had a whole lot more to say, but the time is out. I wanted to walk through certain passages. 1 Corinthians 4.1, this is when I mentioned it in Sunday school. I've always seen this, how I've seen it, I still see it, but there's a part of it that just stood out to me. 1 Corinthians 4, this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ, the stewards of the mysteries of God. I've always understood that, that I am, as a minister, to be a steward of the mysteries of God. I've totally neglected the first part. That's how you are to regard me. And you ought to hold me accountable, or the elders accountable. Are you being faithful stewards of the mysteries of God? My responsibility before God is to provide the word in such a way that you are rightly understanding God's will. My responsibility is to be not only a steward of the mysteries of God, but to feed the people with the knowledge and understanding of God. not free to give you what I think. And this is, I hear this in so many ways, people having such strong opinions about certain things and wanting to hold people to certain behaviors that God has never explicitly stated. And it is the preacher's job to make sure that no one is being held accountable for something that God has not said, and that all of us are being held accountable for what God in fact did say. And that brings a pretty significant burden. To pray for you at all times, that's my job. To give an account for your soul, that's my job. I have a hard enough time keeping an account of my own soul. Not to mention my wife and my kids, that's a real part. How about all you guys? I told you, Hebrews 13, 17 is the one verse I would edit out of the Bible. That can't be there, but it is. Called to be a good example in how I live, in my love and my faith, my purity. The writer of Hebrews says, you should consider my life and the outcome of my faith and follow my example. Yikes. The church is not like anything else on the earth. And I'll close with this last statement. And I'm not sure how to say this. I've tried, I've said it to a couple people, I've tried to find some really slick, easy way to say this, and I can't find one, so it's gonna come out the way it comes out. Back when you considered pay, throughout my years, people are always saying, well, how much should we pay the pastor? Well, how about the teachers in the community schools, right? You compare it to the teacher. This week someone said, well, when he was in school, they said the doctors and the lawyers. Well, okay, maybe that's certainly more lucrative to do that. But this is what I came to conclude, and I don't know how a slick way of saying it. There is no job on the earth, including being the President of the United States, that even remotely rivals what it means to be a preacher and a teacher in the local church. When it comes to communicating honor, double honor to the pastor, there is no job outside there that you can say, let's pay him like that. Let's treat him like that. Because no matter what job you pick, you will have shot way too low. Is that your view of the church? Is that your view of the one who labors hard in the teaching and preaching of God's word? If your phone rings, it's Donald Trump. Pick it up. Yes, Mr. President, I'd like to have lunch with you. Your phone rings. Pastor Douglas, I'd like to have lunch with you. Which one produced the greater sense of excitement and joy? Which of those calls would you rather receive? What job are you gonna equate the authority and power of Christ in the building of his church through certain men, gifted and recognized by the congregation, to what job will you compare that preacher-teacher with? And how you answer that question will have a lot to say about how you view Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are sinful men and women, and I am amongst this group the greatest of them all. And Lord, too often we have sought our own will and our own way, as you've told us from Isaiah in Isaiah 53. We, like sheep, have gone our own way. We've tried to build the church of Christ according to our own mind, according to business principles, according to custom and culture, according to preferences, our likes or dislikes. And we watch in our country churches every week closing their doors, ministers leaving the ministry. We wonder what's wrong. Heavenly Father, show us where we have gone astray. Show us how we, in our own little congregation, collectively and individually, have sought out a mind other than that of Christ, that we might repent, and that we might all the more follow Jesus wherever he would lead us. In Christ we pray, amen.