A Charge to New Testament Church Leaders, Part 1
Acts 20:25-28
Let's look at Acts 20 for our Bible study this morning. In our continuing series in the Book of Acts, we are drawing ourselves to the attention of the Holy Spirit as He speaks to us in versus 25 through 38 particularly this morning. We're looking at Acts 20, verses 25 to 28 as a unit.
We'll take this in several parts, however, as we customarily do, not by intent, but that's always the way it works out. And we've entitled this particular portion, and I think it's fairly obvious what it's talking about and will be to you as we go, but we've entitled it "A Charge to New Testament Church Leaders." Here we have the basics or the priorities of leadership in the church.
Leadership is a very important commodity. There are places today where leadership seminars are offered, and a person can to for a three-day leadership seminar and pay as high as $2,000.00, not including transportation or meals. That's just the fee to be trained. There is a tremendous emphasis on leadership, because anybody in any kind of business operation or in any kind of commercial enterprise or any kind of organization or institution knows that there is a great price to be paid for leadership.
Poor leadership destroys institutions. Good leadership makes them. God is no less but more concerned about leadership. In all of God's Kingdom, leadership is important. Even the angels, you know, are organized. There are principality angels. There are angles called powers. There are ruler angels. There are archangels. God knows that there must be authority and submission in everything, and so there is leadership, even in the angelic world.
As you look at the Old Testament, you find that there are many things in the Old Testament that indicate to us the importance of leadership. We could talk about great Old Testament leaders such as Moses or Samuel or David and others. Leadership is a great commodity, and God has always ministered His Kingdom through key leaders.
In the Old Testament, because of the importance of leadership, God takes a very strong view of inadequate or ineffective leadership. In chapter four or Josiah, in verse 9, God is not only commenting on the sins of Israel but on the sins of Israel's leaders, and He says this: "Like people, like priest." In other words, God says, "I can't expect anything out of the people that I'm not getting out of the leaders. Whatever the leaders are, the people will be." Like people, like priest.
In Isaiah chapter 9 and versus 14 through 16, we find some more indication of God's attitude toward leadership. It talks about, verse, "Therefore, the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush in one day." God's just going to devastate Israel. "The ancient and honorable, he is the head. The prophet who teaches, he is the tail."
In other words, God's going to knock off all the leaders. "For the leaders of this people cause them to err, and they who are led of them are destroyed." God says he's going to punish the leaders, because they have rendered the people sinful by a failure to lead them into holy patterns.
In Jeremiah 5:31, Jeremiah speaks to the same issue. "The prophets prophesy falsely. The priests bare rule by their means, and my people love it so." In other words, the people are loving the inadequate leadership they're getting. In Ezekiel, again another portion of interest to us in looking at God's view of leadership and the important place it plays.
Ezekiel 22:26, "Her priests have violated my law, have profaned mine holy things. They have put no difference between the holy and profane. Neither have they shown difference between the unclean and the clean, have hidden their eyes from my Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. Her princes in her midst are like wolves ravening the prey to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. Her prophets have dubbed them untempered mortar, seeing vanity and divining lies under them, saying, 'Thus saith the Lord when the Lord hath not said.'" And as a result, the people have used oppression, exercised robbery, vexed the poor and needy, and so forth. And so He indicts the priests, the princes, and the prophets for failure to lead as He would have.
In Matthew 15:14, Jesus made a comment about leaders. He looked at the leaders of Israel, and He said, "They are blind leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." Jesus said people will follow their leaders. Therefore, God puts a premium on leadership. God sets the standard high for adequate leadership, and if God set it high, so did Paul, because Paul was a godly man.
Paul is closing out his missionary journey, the third of his tours in Acts 20. He is stopped because his ship has stopped at Miletus on its way to Jerusalem, and he is hurrying to Jerusalem to get there for Pentecost and also to take an offering, which he has collected for the poor saints there. And he has stopped at Miletus for a couple of days, because the ship stopped there, and while he has the opportunity he sends about 30 miles away to the city of Ephesus and asks if the elders or the pastors of the Ephesian congregation will come to Miletus, that he might spend a little time with some final word.
And, you know, it seems strange to realize that Paul spent three years there, and he must have told them at least at one point or two points or 500 points the same thing that he tells them here, but the reason he grabs this opportunity is because he's so burdened by the absolute necessity of adequate leadership, and so in passing he calls them, and he says, "This is something I must say again to you regarding the priorities involved in your leadership." And so from verse 17 through 38, actually that whole section, Paul gives information regarding leadership in the ministry, in the pastorate, in the work of Christ.
Now, there is a sense in which we have to take leadership as it comes in scripture, and leadership in scripture is a two-sided issue. It is an issue of great responsibility with great joy, and it is an issue of great responsibility with great potential for judgment. Good leaders are doubly blessed. Bad leaders are doubly chastised, because "to whom much is given, much shall be required." And that's a principle that runs right across the board in anything that God is involved in.
For example, in James it says in chapter 3, verse 1, "Not many teachers, brethren, because theirs is the greater judgment." But on the other hand, in 1 Timothy 5:17, it says, "The elders that rule well are worthy of double honor." So you have the double honor for the good leader and the double judgment for the poor leader. Leadership is a tremendous responsibility.
Now the task of the early apostles and of the evangelists was to appoint such leaders in each church. The apostles would go around appointing leaders. They would raise them up. The elders of the church at Ephesus, and when I say elders, I'm saying the same as pastors, as I'll show you in a minute, and they're always as a pleurality, never a one-man pastor, always a pleurality in the scriptures. But the elders their, the pastors there, had been trained, discipled, matured by Paul, and they had been appointed by Paul, raised up by the Holy Sprit. Paul became aware of who they were and appointed them to pastor the church at Ephesus.
The apostle said to Titus in Titus 1:5, he said, "Now you set the things in order that need to be set in order in Crete and who ordain elders in every city." Pastors in each city were to be ordained by the evangelist or the apostle. So Paul is talking to men that he himself has discipled, and he gives them a charge that really is much bigger than just the scene that you see in Acts 20.
It's a kind of a thing that can be timeless, because what Paul tells these people is just basic stuff to any kind of biblical leadership in the church. And believe me. If the church is the church of the New Testament, and the church is the church of Jesus Christ, it ought to follow the biblical patterns, right?
And I've found this to be true, that if the church does not follow biblical patterns at the point of its leadership, it will never follow them at the point of its laity. It just doesn't happen. Like people, like priest was true in Israel, and it's still true in the church. Real reform in the church, real New Testament revitalization and revival must come at the level of leadership. It must.
Now as we look at this passage, we're going to see not just a word from a man to some people in history, but a word from the Holy Spirit to the church of Jesus Christ throughout history. And so we don't just make these things historical and lock them in the box and throw them away after the time of the writing of Acts, but we say that they are apropos and appropriate to the church today as they were the very second that Paul uttered them from his lips. They give us for all time God's perspective on the role of the pastor and the elder in the church, who are one and the same.
Now as always, the church, like every other dimension of God's Kingdom and His rule manifested on earth, depends upon its leadership. We find that in Ephesians chapter 4, a very familiar passage to us, God desires that the church be built up. He wants the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body. He wants unity of the faith. He wants deep knowledge of the Son of God.
He wants the perfect man, that is, the church to be matured to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. He does not want the church to be any more children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. He does not want the church to be loveless but speaking the truth in love. He wants the church to grow up and increase in love and all of those things.
But before any of that can happen, before the church can ever be united, before it can ever be mature, before it can ever be Christ-like, before it can ever be insensitive or ungullible, if there's such a word, to false teaching, there must be something that takes place prior, and that is this. He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some teaching pastors for this purpose. In other words, the life of the church, in its productivity and its fruitfulness, is directly dependent upon its leadership.
In 2 Timothy 2:2, a verse which we studied yesterday in our Men's Day, we found that God's design for the church is to teach faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Therefore, leadership is the priority in the church, and it's a tremendous responsibility, believe me. Now because leadership is so very important, we've got to understand very clearly what New Testament biblical church leadership really is.
First of all, let me who you what it is not. Turn to Matthew 20, and just a little look at an interesting passage here that I'm not even going to take time to explain in great detail but just to throw at you, but it does give us some very good insights into what New Testament church leadership is not. I heard a fellow give a message on this passage one time and draw out these points, and it always stuck with me.
Matthew 20:20, "Then came to Him," that is to Jesus, and, you see, Jesus had announced His Kingdom, so "then came to Him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons." Here comes Mama Zebedee, and James and John, and James and John were no, you know, what should we say, inferior people. I mean, they were Class A disciples, but they come along with Mama, and Mama butters up Jesus, "worshipping Him and desiring a certain thing of Him."
So she lays it on a little thick. He said unto her, "What wilt though?" What do you want? He knew. She says . . . and He could tell she wanted something when she didn't even say anything. She says, "Grant that these my two sons may sit the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy left in the Kingdom."
Now this had been a running argument among the disciples. They had argued the whole time since the Kingdom was announced, for the most part, about who was going to sit in the right spots. In fact, that's what they were arguing about the night of the last supper, when nobody would stoop to wash anybody else's feet, because they would never do that when they were arguing about who was the greatest.
And so this was a little problem, so finally James and John said, "Mama, would you go ask for us?" Real men's men. So anyway, she goes and she asks, and Jesus said, "You don't know what you're asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I shall drink and be baptized of the baptism that I am baptized with?" They say unto him, "We are able." They didn't know what they were talking about. They had no idea what He was going to go through.
And He said unto them, "Ye shall drink indeed of my cup." All right. You're going to get it, "and be baptized of the baptism that I am baptized with, but to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give. It should be given to them for whom it is prepared by my Father." They didn't get what they want, but they did get what the didn't want. And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. You know why they were mad? Because they got there first.
Number one, leadership is not political power play. New Testament biblical leadership is not political power play. You are a leader in the church rightfully when God has appointed you as such. That's the Father's to give, right?
Second thing...biblical leadership is not dominant dictatorship, either. Verse 25, "Jesus called them unto Him and said, 'You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercised dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority over them, but it shall not be so among you.'" No. New Testament biblical leadership, leadership in God's Kingdom, is not dominant dictatorship, but "whosever shall be great among you, let him be your...ready for this?...servant." Not dominant dictatorship.
And New Testament biblical leadership isn't charismatic control, either. Verse 27, "Whosoever will be chief among you..." You know, some people just want to be up there and, you know, the implication of chief is the one that everybody looks at and says, "Oh, isn't he wonderful?" Now if you really want to be that, be servant. Be a slave.
New Testament leadership isn't political power play, dominant dictatorship, or charismatic control. It's slavery, service, and I love verse 28, because it lays down the basic commodity of leadership. "Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister and give His life, a ransom for many. The greatest leader that ever lived is a servant." The greatest leader that ever lived was a servant, and He taught us the greatest principle of leadership example. What He was is what we're go be.
Now there's the key. Real leadership is the exemplary life. I am a le