What Should Your Pastor Be Doing?

2 Timothy 2:15...Study to show thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 

I have come to learn in ministry that there are many strains of thought as to what a pastor ought to be doing. The society of churches have a thought as to what a pastor ought to be busy doing, individual congregations have thoughts on what a pastor ought to be doing, church boards have their thoughts on the matter, the pastor has his own thoughts and then there is what God says he ought to be doing. These thoughts can differ from group to group but there is one thing that I think every group agrees upon. That as a man of God He ought to study and know the counsels of God that he might lead those in his charge in such a way that God would be glorified in them. A dear brother, friend and fellow pastor whom many know from  Proclamation Social Gospel and Gospel Fellowship Chapel gave me this past weekend what I believe to be one of the best explanations of the primary work of any one bearing the calling of a pastor. I would like to share it with you in it's entirety as he gave it to me. 

This is a plan suggested by an anonymous parishioner and cited in Rediscovering Expository Preaching ( John MacArthur and the Master's Seminary Faculty, 1992, Word Publishing, pp. 348-349).

Fling him into his office. Tear the "Office" sign from the door, and nail on the sign, "Study." Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the flock of lives of a superficial flock and a holy God.

Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who know about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all night through. And let him come out only when  he's bruised and beaten into being a blessing.

Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks, and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence. Bend his knees in the lonesome valley.

Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God. And make him change his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets.

Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit. And make him preach the Word of the living God.

Test him. Quiz him. Examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, batting averages, and political in-fighting. Launch  at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day, "Sir, we would see Jesus."

When at long last he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he does not, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and digest the television commentaries, and think through the day's superficial problems, and manage the community's  weary drives, and bless the sordid baked potatoes and green beans, ad infinitum, better than he can. 

Command him not to come back until he's read and reread, written and rewritten, until he can stand up and say, "Thus saith the Lord."

Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for celestial wisdom. And give him no escape until he's back against the wall of the Word. 

And sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left - God's word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward, until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity.

And when he's burnt out with the flaming Word, when he's consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he's privileged to translate the truth of God to man, finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-edged sword in his coffin, and raise the tomb triumphant. For he was a brave soldier of the Word. And ere he died, he had become a man of God. 

Why Has God Not Destroyed America?

          The people of Israel had been enslaved to Egypt 400 years. The unbearable cruelty they suffered at the hand of Egypt and the continuing pressure to subdue the ever increasing Israelites under the mighty hand of Egypt was coming to a turning point as God was preparing a redeemer sent by God Himself. The question often is – why did God allow Israel to be enslaved to Egypt for 400 years? Much could be said about the finer details of this, but bear with me as I give the simplest answer that we find in the scriptures.

            As God was establishing His covenant with Abram, God prophesied to Abram in Genesis 15:13-14...then He said to Abram; know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years (14) and also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possession. (NKJV). This of course is the reference of Israels enslavement to the nation of Egypt. 


But why, would God permit Abrams descendants to be enslaved to Egypt for four hundred years before bringing them out with great possessions? The answer is given to us in Gen 15:16...but in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. The reason Israel would be enslaved to Egypt four hundred years was due to the fact that the sin of the Amorites was not yet complete. In other words, the Amorites (who lived in Canaan) were a wicked people living in a wicked nation, but their sin was not yet so great that God would pour out his wrath upon them to wipe them from the face of the earth.

So here now another question jumps to the forefront of our minds...how bad would things have to be before God would pour out his wrath upon a nation to wipe them off the face of the earth? For this let us look at some the instructions God set before Israel as commands that they were not to break which the inhabitants of the land of Canaan openly practiced.

Lev 18:20-25...thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbors wife.

...you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire of Molech

...nor shall you profane the name of your God

...you shall not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an abomination

...nor shall you mate with any animal to defile yourself with it

...nor shall a woman stand before an animal to mate with it, it is perversion

as God gives the commands to Israel he gives to them a window through which can be seen the sins the Amorites of Canaan were committing. The result of these devastating sins is laid out for us in the next two verses

Leviticus 18:24-25...do not defile yourselves with any of these things for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you (25) for the land is defiled, therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants.

This leads me to my next question, how does this differ from what we are seeing in North America today?

Adultery seems to almost be common place today regardless of religion or race. We may not offer our children to the God of Molech through fire, but we abort babies at an astounding rate, likely more then the Amorites ever did. The name of God is being blatantly profaned in our countries, homosexuality is embraced and endorsed even among many religious organizations. And we don't even want to imagine the degradation of the other sins mentioned.

If God destroyed the Amorites and all those who lived in Canaan for these sins, why hasn't God destroyed North America seeing that the sins of our countries mirror those or the Amorites?

Let me give a short 4 point answer to this question.

1 – Ultimately God can do as He chooses...

• The reality is that because all have sinned and have gone their own way, God would by justified if he cast all of humanity under eternal damnation but we are told in Rom 9:15...for He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion upon whomever I will have compassion.

2 – God is long-suffering...

• there are those in this land who are not yet saved who will be saved and the Lord is long-suffering waiting to the elect to come to salvation. 2 Peter 3:9...the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering towards us, not willing that any should perish but that ll should come to repentance...

3 – We are living in a dispensation of grace...

• Rom 11:25...for I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

4 – there are more than 5 righteous in the land...

• when Abraham talked with the Lord about the utter destruction that was about to come upon Sodom and Gamorrah Abraham asked the Lord how many righteous he would have to find in order for him not to pour out the wrath of upon them Gen 18:32...then he said, Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more, suppose ten (righteous people) should be found there? And He said, I will not destroy it for the sake of ten.

The Seeding Of Liberalism

1 Thessalonians 2:13...for this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe...


In my mind I can feel the excitement that Paul and his cohorts felt when the believers in Thessalonica gladly received (accepted as truth) the word of God that Paul, Timothy, and Silvanius brought to them on Paul's second missionary journey. I don't know if there is any greater excitement that can be experienced on earth than when someone hears the word of God and receives it as truth. The result is that you begin to see an immediate impact upon their lives as they are exposed to the truth of the word of God. To receive the word of God is to believe the word of God which ultimately manifests itself through a changed, and continuously changing life. Paul confirms this at the end of the verse when he says ...which effectively works in you who believe... That's what the word of God does to those who believe it - it works within them and it has an effect upon and within them. Heb 4:12...for the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart...


But Paul warned the Ephesians of a time that would come in which after he had departed from them that savage wolves would come in and not spare the flock. And how often it is that we are on the look out for those who blatantly deny hell or the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but Paul followed up that warning by saying in Acts 20:30...also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. So then in order to to protect ourselves from that we try and look to see if there might be any perversions of the word of God within our midst. These things we must do, let's make that clear, but sometimes what happens is that we fail to recognize where some of these things have their beginnings.


I would inject at this point that quite often the culprit where the perverting of the faith happens is under a term we call "liberalism". Now depending on what angle you come from you might certainly have a better definition of what we mean when we speak of liberalism with regards to Christianity. 


But for now allow me to ask this, how does liberalism find it's way into the church? It starts in a very small unnoticed way. It starts by rejecting what the Bible says in small ways and escalates from there. Liberalism at it's roots, rejects the word of God. But how does this happen? It happens when we take the word of God and instead of receiving it, we question it by subjecting it to our own faulty human philosophies developed through our sin tainted experiences, when we exalt our physical experiences over and above the spiritual reality the Bible proclaims. When what is proclaimed in scripture does not agree with my sin tainted experience, I reject it, no matter how small the matter might be or what the Bible might say about it. That is the root of liberalism. Much false teaching starts by rejecting even the small things the Bible says because I esteem my philosophies higher then God's truth. So we must start by keeping our eyes on ourselves and asking, what truth of scripture do I struggle to accept because it doesn't fit into my philosophy? 


Let us be on guard looking first at ourselves lest the word of God does not effectively work within us and we are left with a "form" of godliness yet denying it's power, and find within ourselves the seed liberalism.