Could we please turn this evening to the Gospel of John, chapter 21?
We will not take the time this evening to read the entirety of this beautiful event, as to how the Lord Jesus came and encountered His disciples. But let us begin with verse 12 and read down through verse 17.
John 21:12-17
Jesus saith unto them, Come and break your fast.
And none of the disciples durst inquire of Him, Who art Thou? knowing that it was the Lord.
Jesus cometh, and taketh the bread, and giveth them, and the fish likewise.
This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after that He was risen from the dead.
So when they had broken their fast, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me more than these?
He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee.
He saith unto him, Feed My lambs.
He saith to him again a second time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?
He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee.
He saith unto him, Tend My sheep.
He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?
Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou Me?
And he said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.
Jesus saith unto him, Feed My sheep.
Let us pray, please.
Lord, as we begin this time tonight of looking into Your Word, we want to offer You thanks for Your grace that has been upon us this day—for how You have been among us, revealing Yourself, speaking to us, and imparting strength and grace to us. Our hearts are full of worship to You.
We thank You, as we come again tonight, that we have that wonderful assurance that by the Spirit of God, You are here with us. We welcome You. We bow our knee to You. We put this time completely into Your hands.
Lord, You know all the difficulties and obstacles that may need to be overcome in our lives—in terms of tiredness of body, blockages in our understanding, or even misunderstandings that we hold. But we bow our knee to You tonight and ask that, by Your Holy Spirit, You will come and speak clearly to our hearts.
Lord, we desire to see You and to understand more fully what You had in mind concerning this matter of the shepherding work of the people of God. Help us now, as we cast ourselves upon You. We ask it in Your name. Amen.
This really is a beautiful event that we have recorded for us in the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel of John.
You will recall that Peter had already been encountered by the Lord on a previous occasion after he had denied the Lord three times. Now there has been a period of time that has elapsed, and in this period of time apparently some discouragement, or something, had begun to enter into the hearts of some of the disciples.
As usual, Peter, being the kingpin—the leader of the group—says, “I am going fishing.” The others say, “Well, we are going with you.” So they go up to the Sea of Galilee and go fishing. They fished all night and had not caught anything.
In this kind of situation, the Lord Jesus appears on the seashore. As you will recall, He carries on a conversation with them and says, “Children, do you have any fish?” They say, “No.”
He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find a catch.” They cast therefore, and they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish.
Actually, down in verse 11, it says that Simon Peter went and drew the net to land, full of large fish, one hundred and fifty-three. Although there were so many, the net was not torn.
I think this gives us an opportunity to understand some of the dynamic that was going on in the hearts of these men who had followed the Lord for a little over three years. They had gone through many events and experiences with Him, but now they were undecided, apparently, as to what they were going to do with their lives.
So they simply returned to their old profession—at least Peter did, and some of the others joined him. Here the Lord, in a very loving and redeeming way, comes, encounters them, fixes breakfast for them, and helps them to catch fish.
So they come in and have breakfast. Then the Lord engages Peter in a conversation.
I am sure every one of us has read it many times and probably heard much ministry given on this particular portion of Scripture. But I would hope tonight that we could see how the Lord encountered Peter in particular.
I do not think we need to overlook the other men who were there. Sometimes we just see something of what the Lord did with Peter. But, you know, I grew up in a family of six. When Mom and Dad dealt with the other five, I learned a few lessons myself.
As a matter of fact, when some of us had done something wrong and the others got disciplined, we did not have to get disciplined. We knew what the lesson was to be learned. So I think that these other disciples also gained much from this conversation that took place between the Lord Jesus and Simon Peter.
You will recall that when the Lord first called Peter, he was a fisherman. The Lord told him, “I will make you fishers of men.” Somehow Peter felt like he could go ahead and enter right into that. He had no idea that somehow his occupation was going to be changed.
But here, in the midst of his discouragement, despondency, and uncertainty as to what direction to go, the Lord comes in a beautiful way and begins to share with him regarding his life’s work—what he was going to be doing for the rest of his life.
We do not want to get too much into all the dynamics that were going on here. But it seems to me that what the Lord was doing was taking advantage of this opportunity to transfer to His disciples something that was very precious in His own heart.
When we sometimes think of this shepherding work in which the Lord is engaged, we usually think in terms of what we get, what we gain, from the Lord being our Shepherd. Really, brothers and sisters, there is no way that we can fully understand, describe, or fathom all that we experience from the hand of our Lord as He is our Good Shepherd.
But I wonder whether we have ever stopped to give some consideration to the fact that this is really not the issue—that is, what we get. The issue is: what does He get?
When the Lord said to Simon Peter on these three different occasions, “Feed My lambs. Tend My sheep. Feed My sheep,” I think something went down into the heart of Peter. Peter began to understand that this thing in which he was engaged was not just something for him.
There is something in this whole matter of the Lord’s shepherding work that has to do with God Himself and with His heart being satisfied.
I hope we understand, dear people of God, that God in Himself is complete. That is, He does not need anything added to Him. He is absolutely perfect. He is fully satisfied.
Yet in His heart there is something for which He has longed. Do you know what it is? It is us—in rich, full, complete fellowship with Him, fully enjoying life with Him.
God’s heart will never be satisfied until there are those who are in full fellowship with Himself. When we read the end of the Book, brothers and sisters, what do we discover?
We discover God in fellowship with His people: God being their God, and they being His people. There is nothing to stand in the way of God being fully God to them, and they being all to God that He has desired.
So when the Lord comes to Simon Peter here and says to him, “Simon, do you love Me? If you do, then be about this business of taking care of My flock.”
Let us not, in this whole matter of shepherding work, allow our focus to be only on what we can enter into ourselves and what we can lead other people into. We need at times to give thought to the fact that this shepherding work is something God is doing to bring satisfaction to His own heart.
Now, dear people of God, I hope we understand that when God is satisfied—when His heart is full of what He wants—there is no way to get away from His blessing. It is as though He pours it out upon us, and we would have to run to try to get away from it.
But I hope we do not allow ourselves to get bogged down in this thought about shepherding and think it only has to do with what happens to us.
As a result of God doing His shepherding work in us, His Son will be produced in us, and that will bring great delight to His own heart.
When the Lord says to Simon Peter and these other disciples, “Be about this business of shepherding,” I think it is the Lord’s way of exposing His own heart as to something that is of utmost importance to Him.
He came to do His Father’s will. He came that we might have life and have it abundantly.
Here is this seemingly last opportunity for Him to engage these men in conversation that would somehow set them on a track, set them in a direction, that really aligns itself with what is in the Lord’s heart.
It is a beautiful thing, brothers and sisters, that in these last hours that our Lord Jesus had before He returned to the Father, He took up this topic of shepherding the people of God. It ought to say something to us.
In Acts 20, we have looked at this passage a number of times today. Paul sent to Ephesus from Miletus and asked the elders of that church to come and meet with him in Miletus.
In verse 28 he says to them:
Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit hath made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
Again, we need to understand what this whole matter means to God—the price that was paid. We need to keep before us how precious every one of these lambs and sheep is to God.
I hope that it will somehow stir in our hearts something that will cause us to give ourselves more diligently and more sacrificially, to whatever degree the Lord has chosen that we find ourselves engaged in this matter of the shepherding work of God’s people.
The only way, it seems to me, that we can effectively and rightly shepherd the people of God is for somehow the heart of the Lord Jesus for the people of God to be created in us.
We simply do not have it in us naturally. I know there are a lot of good people in the world, and a lot of people who have great concern and compassion for others. But there is absolutely nothing that compares to the heart of our Lord Jesus for the people of God.
Somehow, this heart that is in our Lord has to be recreated in the hearts of His people if He is going to continue to do this shepherding work through His redeemed people.
Someone has already made mention tonight in prayer regarding the Lord Jesus as the Great Shepherd. Actually, in the New Testament Scriptures, there are four descriptions used of the Lord Jesus as Shepherd.
The first is found in John 10. We have already read about it this morning.
John 10:11, 14
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd; and I know Mine own, and Mine own know Me.
The first description used of the Lord Jesus as Shepherd is that He is the Good Shepherd.
I do not pretend to understand all that that word contains in reference to the Lord Jesus as Shepherd. But He is a Good Shepherd. Language is always a problem because we use it in ways that somehow do not fully convey all that should be said.
But our Lord Jesus is a Good Shepherd. He is a Good Shepherd because He really cares about the sheep. He is not interested merely in what benefits He derives from them; He is genuinely interested in the sheep.
He was so concerned about them that He was willing to go to the ultimate to demonstrate that He was the Good Shepherd.
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep.
If we want to understand what a Good Shepherd is, He is one who loves the sheep so deeply that there is no sacrifice beyond the requirement of their need. He laid down His life. He paid the supreme price on behalf of His sheep. So He can be called the Good Shepherd.
In Hebrews, He is referred to as the Great Shepherd of the sheep.
Again, we use these words so lightly. But sometimes there ought to be words in our language that we reserve for special occasions. This word great, regarding our Lord Jesus as the Great Shepherd, exalts Him to the highest of all positions.
He is beyond comparison. There is nothing else to compare Him to. If language means anything, it means that He has been placed in a category all His own. We can legitimately refer to Him as the Great Shepherd of the sheep.
In 1 Peter 5, He is referred to as the Chief Shepherd.
What does that mean? If He is the Chief, then everybody else who are shepherds are underneath Him. When you read the 1 Peter 5 passage, that is exactly what you see.
Peter is speaking to a group of men who are elders. He instructs them to shepherd the flock of God and to take oversight thereof. Then he says, “When the Chief Shepherd appears.”
In this whole process of shepherding, it is of utmost importance that those involved in shepherding understand that there is a Chief Shepherd to whom they are responsible. All their shepherding work needs to be done under His direction.
Somehow He is able to take His own heart and convey it to them. In reality, what ends up happening is that it is the Lord Jesus Himself, through members of the body, who is doing this shepherding work.
Therefore, we never need to take this work into our own hands and think of it as something that is ours. Always keep in mind that we are carrying this out under the direction of our Chief Shepherd.
And when the chief Shepherd shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away.
As these shepherds carry out their responsibility in the shepherding work of the Lord Jesus, and do it under His direction according to His will, there awaits them an unfading crown of glory.
I wish I could persuade my brother Stephen to come tonight and explain to us what all that means: an unfading crown of glory.
I have heard our brother and others share previously about this word glory. We do not have definitions in the Scriptures of the word glory. So what do the Scriptures mean by the glory of God?
The one that strikes home to me the most is that the glory of God is when God is fully satisfied—when His heart is fully satisfied—and He just glows because He is satisfied.
Do we understand that, in some way, perhaps difficult for us to grasp, when we are engaged in this shepherding work—which seems so important to the Lord—and when we are faithful by the grace of God and the help of the Holy Spirit in carrying out this shepherding ministry, there awaits us an unfading crown of glory?
Somehow, we are going to be able to enter into that full satisfaction that God Himself is experiencing.
I think it is right for us to be sobered up once in a while by simply allowing ourselves to think in terms of eternity.
I have been living some fifty years now. It seems like a long time. I know perhaps to some of you who are a little older, it must seem like a long time too. But when you put that in comparison to eternity, it is nothing.
For us to think in terms that there is a whole age awaiting us that is without time—and God is preparing us for that—well, in the right way, I think it is good for us to think about sharing God’s glory.
Perhaps what Peter has in mind is that as we find ourselves engaged in the shepherding work, the Lord uses us. He puts His own heart in us, gives us grace, gives us love, and causes us to be faithful.
Then, when we are transported into that age to come, we actually are able to see the results right there before us of the work that we did here. That is glory.
Our Father’s smile will always be upon His face—a full satisfaction because He has realized His purpose. We will be able to smile with Him and enjoy that shepherding work.
There is something about this matter of the Lord Jesus being our Chief Shepherd. Then, in John 10, there is one other description that I think is important for us to consider for a moment.
John 10:16
And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd.
He is not only the Good Shepherd, the Great Shepherd, and the Chief Shepherd, but He is the one Shepherd. He is the one Shepherd.
All the shepherding that is being done is really being done by the Lord Himself. The ultimate outcome of all this is one flock, one Shepherd.
God does not have any other shepherds. Any other shepherding that is done is done under Him, by Him, and through Him. It is not something we are doing by human effort.
Our God, being an all-wise God and an all-powerful God, can do anything any way He wants to. He could have chosen to do it a different way. He could have chosen to do it without including us. But He has chosen not to, and I do not think we should question His wisdom.
Our hearts ought to be encouraged in this matter of coming to see the Lord Jesus as this. Every one of us, without exception, should say, “Lord, as Good Shepherd, as Great Shepherd, as the one Shepherd, express Your shepherd’s heart through me.”
Then this work that He desires to have done can get done.
Tonight I want us also to consider together what we might call the work of shepherding.
As I have given thought to this, my own understanding has brought me to the place where I would like to describe this work of shepherding under three different categories:
I hope you will allow me to define my words as we come to them.
First of all, in a general way, the Lord desires to express His shepherd heart, to one degree or another, through every one of His people.
We are told in Revelation 1 and Revelation 5 that we have been made kings and priests. But we have also been called to be part of this work of shepherding the people of God.
Just in a general way, everyone without exception, if you know the Lord, will very quickly in your life find yourself—if you are open to the Lord’s heart—engaged in this matter of shepherding. You will find yourself engaged in the shepherding work that the Lord is doing.
None of us needs to disqualify ourselves. It is simply a matter of Him taking His own heart, His care, His concern, and His burden for others, and expressing it through you.
In 1 Corinthians 12, we saw this in our questions this morning. Beginning in the second part of verse 24, the apostle says:
But God tempered the body together, giving more abundant honor to that part which lacked;
that there should be no schism in the body;
but that the members should have the same care one for another.
And whether one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it;
or one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
There is a principle here, brothers and sisters. It is the principle of having the same care, one for another.
If you know the Lord, then to a certain degree you have a capacity to care for somebody else with that same life that is in you. That life is expressed and released through you, and others become the recipients of that. That is caring for them.
In this whole matter of us being members of one body and members of one flock, there is this very great need among us to be engaged in the care of one another.
It is interesting that when you read the New Testament, particularly in the letters of Paul, he seems to be really caught up in this little phrase, “one another.” You will find it almost thirty times in the New Testament.
What are some of these “one another” commands in which we are told to engage ourselves? How about John 13:34? What are we told to do?
John 13:34
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another;
even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
This is not a suggestion. The Lord prefaced that with, “This is My commandment.” Here is the first way in which we can begin to care and be involved in the shepherding work of the Lord: we learn how to love one another.
In 1 John, he goes beyond that a little and gives us practical ways in which we can love one another. If we see our brothers and sisters in need, what are we supposed to do? Respond to them and, in practical ways, manifest our love.
He goes on to say in 1 John 3:16:
Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us:
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Not merely in word, but in truth and in deed. There is this matter of sacrificing—laying down our lives for the brethren.
We need to learn, brothers and sisters, to bring this down out of the realm of theory and bring it down to where we live every day.
We do not have to travel three thousand miles to a mission field to begin to put this into practice. We can begin working it out right where we are right now. I can assure you there are those in your life right now for whom you can begin to lay down your life.
Going back to the matter of the Lord Jesus being the Good Shepherd, what qualified Him to be a Good Shepherd? “I am the Good Shepherd, and the Good Shepherd does what?” He lays down His life for the sheep.
If we are going to be engaged in the shepherding work, one of the ways in which we can do it is to learn how to lay down our lives for the sheep sacrificially, giving of ourselves, our resources, and our time.
I want to be careful that I do not get too practical here tonight. But, brothers and sisters, I can almost assure you that in the life of every one of us there are brothers and sisters with whom we can begin to put this into action.
There may be a sister with whom you are in fellowship. She may be the mother of four or five small children, and her week is just indescribable in terms of what she has to do. But you do not have any children.
Do you think there is some way you might lay down your life for that sister by going over one afternoon and saying, “Sister, I have the afternoon free, so I am coming over here to take care of your kids. You are free for the afternoon”?
We can become very, very practical in this matter.
What about a brother who has been so tied up in many different ways in his own job, takes care of his own family, and then has the added responsibility of the work in the church? He does not even have time to mow his grass.
But you have a Saturday afternoon free when the football games are on. For some of us, that means laying down our lives—to give up watching a football game on Saturday afternoon.
In this general way, brothers, we can begin to enter in and manifest the shepherd heart of the Lord Jesus with each other.
What are some other ways in which the Scripture speaks of our responsibility to one another?
Some of us are too much in a hurry, are we not? Amen.
But I hope you get the point, brothers and sisters. There are unlimited opportunities for you as a simple brother or sister in the church of God, among the flock of God, to engage yourself in very practical and effective ways of expressing the shepherd heart of the Lord Jesus. There is no excuse. Absolutely none.
I hope we find our hearts challenged tonight to begin engaging ourselves in the shepherding work of the Lord, carrying upon our hearts one or two people.
One of the sisters shared in our time today that there ought to be one or two people whom I carry in my heart, for whom I am praying, and to whom I reach out.
We are not thinking in terms of twenty, thirty, or fifty people. Can you imagine how your assemblies would be revolutionized—how the Lord would come in, and what care would be taken of His people—if those of us here tonight would say, “By the grace of God, beginning tonight, I am going to seek to engage myself in this matter of shepherding the Lord’s people: caring for one another, loving one another, forgiving one another, and all the other ways the Lord gives us opportunity.”
There is a trap into which we as Christians fall. It is the trap of believing that the only thing of importance among the people of God takes place when we are in meetings.
So we become meeting-oriented. We have a mentality of meetings, meetings, meetings.
Please do not misunderstand: meetings are very important to the work of God. They have had them from the very beginning, and they have been valuable. But, brothers and sisters, they need to be linked with the rest of what is going on in our lives.
They do not need to be something separate from and disjointed from our lives. The meetings need to flow naturally together with everything else that is going on in our lives.
This matter of shepherding ought to be something we think of in terms of every day of the week—every hour of the day, if necessary. We need to break down this meeting mentality that somehow causes us to say, “The only time I am available to care for the Lord’s people is when we meet together.”
It is a subtle thing that begins to enter into our thinking. I believe the Lord wants to get us beyond that and over it, so that we have a heart always open to this matter of the Lord’s people being shepherded.
So first of all, in this matter of the work of shepherding, there is the general, overall work of shepherding in which every one of God’s people needs to find themselves engaged.
The second kind of shepherding is what I have chosen to call administrative shepherding.
In 1 Peter 5, we have been over these verses a number of times today, but they are worth going over again.
1 Peter 5:1-3
The elders therefore among you I exhort, who am a fellow-elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, who am also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:
Tend the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight, not of constraint, but willingly, according unto God; nor yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;
neither as lording it over the charge allotted to you, but making yourselves ensamples to the flock.
Then, back in Acts 20, Paul’s words to the elders from Ephesus, verses 28 through 31:
Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops, to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.
I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock;
and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
Wherefore watch ye, remembering that by the space of three years I ceased not to admonish every one night and day with tears.
You will notice in both of these passages that there are two things these elders are instructed to do. First, they are to shepherd the whole flock of God. Secondly, they are to take oversight.
There is an aspect of this matter of shepherding that, it seems to me, can only be done by these elders. That is why I have chosen to call it administrative shepherding.
Their concern needs to be for the whole flock, not just individual sheep, although certainly individuals make up the whole. There is a dimension of shepherding that needs to be carried out by those who function in the capacity of elders—those who have responsibility for the overall well-being of any given assembly of the Lord’s people.
There is a dimension of shepherding that can only be done by them. What I have discovered through observation is that often the dimension of shepherding that can only be done by them never gets done because they are too engaged in doing other things.
Those other things rob them of their time, and sometimes their energy, to give themselves to this overall shepherding that needs to be done. The appeal of my heart tonight is that we would altogether start moving in the direction where these brothers, who have this responsibility of shepherding, could be free to do that particular work which they alone can do.
For instance, the Lord Jesus is very concerned about His flock being properly fed. He wants them to be fed with the right kind of food. He is very concerned about their spiritual health, which is directly related to what they eat.
It is the responsibility of these administrative shepherds to have a long view of things. If they have gone out ahead in preparation for next year, where is the food going to come from for next year?
We sometimes think of shepherding as some task where there are all these lush pastures and grass everywhere. But that was not the case. These shepherds had to think about where their flocks were going to feed next year.
They had to go out and scout the land, finding a little patch of grass over here where they could take the flock for a while. Then they had to be looking ahead.
But, brothers and sisters, if there had not been such a heart, the sheep would have been caught without pasture, without food. If these shepherds do not do this, the people of God end up spiritually malnourished.
It is not because they do not have hearts. Sometimes it is because they are so engaged in doing the other shepherding work that some of the rest of us ought to be doing that they do not have the time or energy to do it.
I think it would be of great value if those brothers serving in the capacity of elders, having the overall responsibility of overseers of the flock of God, would on a regular basis get away with their Lord and say, “Dear Lord Jesus, out of Your great concern for Your flock, how do You want to feed them next year?”
Then they could get alone and hear a word from Him. They could begin to lead with confidence, knowing that the Lord has spoken and said, “There is some pasture over here, and I want you to take My flock there.”
But you know what happens? Much of the shepherding is done by the seat of our pants. We just come sliding in at the last minute, and then we wonder why some of the sheep are disgruntled and irritable.
It is because many times they have not had enough food to eat, or at least the right kind of food.
There is another dimension to their shepherding, and that is what Paul encouraged them to be very aware of: wolves coming in among the flock.
Sheep are very vulnerable, very naive, and very open to attack. The Lord has set among His people those whom He holds responsible to see to it that they spot the wolves when they come in and do something to make sure those wolves do not produce damage to His sheep.
For the most part, that is not the work of a sheep. But a shepherd needs to do this—someone who has an eye to this, whose heart has been exercised by the Lord, someone who can begin to sense that there is something not right about a thing.
They are not gullible. They have been through experiences. They have enough life experience that certain things cause their antenna to go up. They pick up signals that something is just not right, and they do not proceed until somehow that has been cleared up.
Everything on the outside might look good. Remember what Jesus said: there are wolves in sheep’s clothing. To most of us, they just look like sheep. But to the trained eye, he sees through the façade, sees the wolf’s heart, and takes the necessary action.
If this kind of work is not done among the Lord’s people, it means devastation. It means a lot of innocent lambs who cannot do anything to hide are going to be harmed. Some will even become casualties because this kind of shepherding work was not carried out.
The appeal to brothers and sisters is that we would pray for these brothers. We would do everything God gives us grace to do to give them time away and whatever else is necessary, so that their hearts can be tuned to long-range thinking about the overall well-being of the flock.
They need to be in a position where they are not so wearied by responsibilities that they are caught off guard by these wolves that come in among us. It will be a great help to this whole matter of the Lord’s shepherding work if we can free these brothers to do this work.
There is another thing Peter tells these administrative shepherds to do: lead the flock by example, not by lording it over them.
I do not know if exampling is a word, but anyhow, I hope you get the idea. They are to set the example. They are to be out in front, leading and setting the example for all the others to follow.
This third dimension of shepherding is what I have chosen to call apostolic shepherding. Again, you need to allow me to explain what I mean by this word apostolic.
Look in Ephesians 4.
Paul points out to us in some of the earlier verses of chapter 4 that after the Lord Jesus was exalted at the right hand of the Father, after He had ascended on high, He led captivity captive and gave gifts to men.
Then, down in verse 11, he says:
Ephesians 4:11-12
And He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, shepherds and teachers;
for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ.
It is interesting that in this list of gifts that the exalted Lord Jesus gave to His church are the shepherd-teachers.
You will notice that he says, “He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers.” In reality, what we are talking about in the pastor-teacher is one person carrying out two different functions. He is a shepherd-teacher, or a teacher-shepherd.
There are two different dimensions to this responsibility given to these individuals.
As came out in our group this morning, reference was made to this person being a shepherd-teacher. The word pastor is used only once in the whole New Testament—in this verse. It is the only place you find the word pastor.
I remember our brother Stephen saying on another occasion, “Where the Scriptures are silent, men are most vocal.”
Pastor, in Christianity, is probably one of the most commonly used words around, yet you find it only once in the New Testament. That one occurrence is even a mistranslation.
Do you know what the word pastor here is? It is the exact same word used in John 10:11, when Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd.” It is the word poimēn.
I do not know why in the world all the translators insist, when they come to this verse, on translating it pastor. You can see where people’s heads are. They cannot help themselves.
Even though the word says poimēn, they translate it shepherd in every other place, including derivatives and verbs. In 1 Peter 5 they do not say, “Pastor the flock”; they say, “Shepherd the flock.” In Acts 20:28, they say, “Shepherd the flock.”
But when they come here, they have to translate it pastor, because we have this mentality. It has created a real problem for us.
Along with the word pastor, we have this whole idea and concept of what this person is. First of all, he wears a three-piece suit. He stands behind a pulpit on Sunday morning. He visits people in the hospital, conducts funerals and weddings, and is the kingpin—the top echelon—of the church. The buck stops with him.
But you will find absolutely none of that in the Word of God, either by description or by example. It simply is not there.
Again, I hope we see it, brothers and sisters, how much the Lord desires for His people to be shepherded.
First of all, He says to every one of us, “Be involved in shepherding.” Then He says to those who are elders, “Shepherd the flock.” On top of that, He gives to the whole body of Christ shepherd-teachers to engage themselves in this work of shepherding the Lord’s people.
Notice what He says all four of these functions are to perform. In verse 12, they are to be involved in the equipping of the saints for the work of service.
I like the way somebody explained it in our meeting this morning: this equipping of the saints, this bringing people into maturity, results in every member being involved in the ministry. There is only one ministry; it is the ministry of Christ.
The result of the function of these people is that it produces ministry in all the members. This word equipping is the same word used of James and John when the Lord Jesus called them to be His disciples.
What were James and John doing when the Lord called them? They were mending nets. Yes, that is what the word is. They were mending nets; they were bringing back into completion, fullness, and proper operation.
That is what these functions are to be doing among God’s people. The Lord added to that list the shepherd-teacher because He has a shepherd heart. We ought not to be surprised that He places in the body shepherd-teachers who engage themselves in the particular function of seeing to it that the Lord’s people are shepherded.
The sad thing is that those referred to as pastors today hardly have enough time to get involved in the actual work of shepherding, even though many of them have a real shepherd’s heart.
By the time they get finished oiling the machinery, there is not any time or energy left to get involved in people’s lives. They become very professional.
The Lord, out of His great shepherd’s heart, has put shepherd-teachers in the body. They are to be engaged in equipping the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, mature manhood, and the measure of the stature belonging to the fullness of Christ.
I was greatly helped by something I read. Our dear brother here gave me a copy of Brother C. H. Mackintosh’s Treasury. In that book, I was reading an article by Brother Mackintosh entitled Publicly and From House to House.
Maybe some of you have read it. My heart was greatly helped—what can I say? I was thrilled. Something had been stirring inside me for over a year about this shepherd-teacher in Ephesians 4:11.
I suppose it is always good to find somebody who supports your particular sensing about something, but it was confirmation to me. I had never read it anyplace else.
He simply pointed out that the shepherd-teacher of Ephesians 4:11 is not the elder.
That is what I had thought for many years. But the shepherd-teacher of Ephesians 4:11 is apostolic—that is, he is sent out to the whole flock of God, moving from assembly to assembly, exercising the gift God has given him in the matter of building up the whole body of Christ.
I do not understand all that the Lord has in mind regarding the activity of these shepherd-teachers. But I think part of their responsibility is to be involved in encouraging and helping the Lord’s people really move into this matter of God’s people being shepherded.
That is His heart. He has a shepherd’s heart given to him by the Lord Himself. They encourage, support, come alongside, and help others in this work of shepherding. They do not do it all themselves.
I would also point out that, in my thought, they always do it in cooperation with the administrative shepherds. They do not move into a flock and simply begin doing their shepherding work.
No, they come in fellowship with those who are doing the administrative shepherding and begin to say, “Is there some way we can be of assistance? Can we work with you?”
Many of these brothers involved in this work have full-time jobs. In this country, that means a lot. They are usually married to their jobs, and it is no small thing for them to get proper time to shepherd God’s people on a one-to-one basis.
So God, out of His mercy—can you see it?—out of His great care for His people, puts in the body those who move among God’s people and primarily give themselves to shepherding and teaching among God’s people.
But I think they always do it in cooperation and in submission to those administrative shepherds who are there in that flock.
Brother Mackintosh also pointed out that there are different aspects to the shepherd-teacher. The shepherding part is concerned with one aspect, and the teaching part is interested in another.
He puts it this way:
Here you have one person who has, in a sense, a double burden, a double concern, and a double function.
On one side, he is interested in the teaching dimension, which is primarily public: taking the Word of God and setting before the people of God the truth about the finished work of Christ and how they can enter into it.
But, brothers and sisters, you and I know by experience that we have been to meeting after meeting, heard message after message and teaching after teaching, and gone home with it having no impact upon our lives.
So the Lord, in His mercy, says, “I do not only want the public aspect of it. I want there to be follow-up. I want there to be this one-on-one encounter where you sit down and say, ‘Now, what did the Lord speak to you through that message? What did He encounter you with?’”
Then, in a practical way, help them on an individual basis to know how to go from step to step to step, entering into the reality of the truth that was presented to them.
Oh, how we need this among God’s people. So much is lost. We have heard much teaching, but we need people walking with us, helping us, encouraging us, and standing with us until this matter really gets worked into us.
Let me give another quotation from Brother Mackintosh regarding the shepherd’s work:
A true shepherd is a man who is not only possessed of a real spiritual gift, but is also animated by the very affections of the heart of Christ toward every lamb and sheep of His blood-bought flock.
He can enter, with the profound sympathy of an affectionate heart, into the thousand little circumstances and sorrows of the path. He can kneel down with the tired, the tempted, the crushed, and the sorrowing one before the mercy seat; and they can pour out their hearts together and draw down sweet consolation from the God of all grace and the Father of all mercies.
Oh, how we need that among our people.
There is this dimension of apostolic shepherding: those whom the Lord personally places in the body, gifts, and then sends among His people to shepherd them.
Will you allow me tonight to share a deep concern that I have?
There is much being said in Christian circles today about counseling. I want to be the last one in the whole world who would in any way hinder the Lord from taking care of His people.
But the thing that concerns me is that we have handed over this matter of the shepherding care of the Lord’s people to those with whom I am not sure the Lord has placed this responsibility.
There is just something not right about walking into a plush office and sitting down and paying sixty dollars for an hour of counseling under the guise of Christianity. There is something about that whole thing that does not ring true to my heart.
One of the things I felt would have been good if we could have done it this weekend—but we did not have time—was to go through the Gospel of John and see our Lord Jesus engaged in His shepherding work.
Think of His encounters with Nicodemus, the woman at the well, Mary and Martha, and the experience we have talked about tonight in John 21.
The Lord did not have an office. He did not have office hours. Nicodemus came late at night. The only office the Lord Jesus had in John 4 was the well at Samaria. But what a wonderful work of shepherding He did.
There is something about that whole professional dimension being brought into the work of God that concerns me greatly.
I know that probably the reason much of that has developed is because there has been a failure among the people of God for the kind of shepherding to be done that needs to be done. So we need to be careful where we point our fingers.
But I am expressing a concern that I have, and I hope that concern translates itself into many prayers to the Lord of the harvest—that He will raise up among us shepherds who can take care of the people of God.
Then we do not have to send them to the world, or to a worldly way of getting shepherding done. We can have among us those in whom we have confidence that the Lord has placed them in the body and gifted them to do this work of shepherding His people.
There are two final matters that I want to leave with us tonight.
One is something I have already mentioned, and it was in that passage from Matthew 9 that we read this morning. We need to pray to the Lord of the harvest.
We need to speak to the shepherd heart of our Lord Jesus, because somehow, if we can see with His eyes tonight and see the people of God, I wonder whether we would not see them much as He saw them: as sheep without shepherds—distressed, anxious, frustrated, and exploited.
If we see that, what else can we do, brothers and sisters, except plead with the Shepherd that He would more fully express His shepherd heart among His people?
We need to ask that He would raise up among us those who would engage themselves in this work of shepherding, in addition to the shepherding that takes place among all of us and the shepherding that elders and responsible brothers do.
In addition to that, may the Lord raise up among us, and be pleased to give us in great number, shepherd-teachers who would be engaged in the shepherding work of the Lord.
Alongside that, I think there is another thing we need to ask the Lord to help us with: we need to find the Lord’s way of making a place for them.
It is one thing for the Lord to give them. It is another thing for us to allow them to function, or to encourage them to function.
I know we need to be careful. We need to go slowly. We need to have the Lord’s hand upon us as we go.
But I want to illustrate what I mean by suggesting that perhaps, along with all the other activities we have in terms of people coming among us to minister the Word and do other things, we should consider whether it would be valuable to invite a shepherd-teacher to come for a period of time and simply be there for a while and do his work among us.
In this way, we allow the Lord to create a place.
I do not know that I am right in this, brothers and sisters, but it does seem to me that when the Lord placed in His body the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the shepherd-teachers, He understood that their function was valuable and important to the well-being of the church.
That was not only true in the first century. I think it has been true in every century since then, and it is true in our time today.
In our hearts, we need to let the Lord help us know how to make room.
I know there are many things going on within Christian circles. I know there are groups who boast of having an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher—all five of them—in their little group.
I know there are those who put those titles on people who have no gifting from the Lord to function in them. I know that happens.
But I hope that will not keep us from keeping our hearts open for the Lord to do this work of placing among us and giving to us these functions.
Please remember: the title describes what they do. It is not an office.
They are not titles; they are descriptions. They are job descriptions. Brothers and sisters, in my opinion, we need all of their functions in the body.
Again, I trust we will not get tied up in titles and all this kind of thing. But I hope we are wide open for the Lord to express Himself among His people in these ways.
Tonight, as a way of closing regarding this matter of shepherding, I would like to encourage us, if it is appropriate and agreeable to the brothers, that we spend some time petitioning our Great Shepherd, our Good Shepherd, and the one Shepherd.
May He be pleased to involve all of us in His shepherding work, and to bring those brothers who have this administrative responsibility into the fullness of their function.
May the Lord also be pleased to raise up among us and give to us those who function in the shepherd-teacher way.
So let us spend some time praying about that.