Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: You should have people in mind that you know, who teach you the word of God that you say, "What would they do? How do they handle? What do they respond like when bad things happen to them? Or injustice traverses their life and now they're oppressed or opposed? How do they respond to that?" Someone who claims to try and live according to the scripture hits real-life crises that we face in our day.

Guest (Male): Pastors certainly face daily challenges as they serve their flocks. That's why the Apostle Paul called the Thessalonians to love and appreciate their pastors for all they do. And today, there are powerful forces at work in our world to tear down our pastors and their families.

Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez describes how God wants us to support our pastors. We've started a message titled Deference Instead of Autonomy, and our subject is Christian leaders and our relationship to them. We'll hear Pastor Mike with today's lesson.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Hebrews chapter 13, beginning in verse number seven. That's where the topic of leaders comes up and it says in the text, "Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith." Be like those guys. It says remember your leaders. Remember them, not just for the sake of honoring them, but the preachers who speak the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Now we've already seen a lot about examples in Hebrews, haven't we? Chapter 11 is all about these great heroes of faith, people with sandals and robes from ancient times who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, conquered kingdoms, right? We've even seen from New Testament times, as he says in chapter two, the apostles who did these miraculous signs, and all that's great and we should follow in the virtue of their faith.

But now he makes it much more personal. The guys that you know. Not just know about, but the guys that you know who open up the word of God and preach to you. He says those are the guys you need to keep in mind and remember the way that they live, the outcome of their faith, and you need to imitate that kind of faith.

It's not thoughtless. It's not blind. It's not just this "I'm blindly following these people." It should be thoughtful, because the assumption in Hebrews is that these leaders that are preaching the word of God are good leaders, and they're accurately preaching the word of God. There are exceptions, and we'll deal with those throughout the message, but the point is, assuming that you have good leaders who are teaching you the word of God, number one on your outline, jot this one down: you should thoughtfully follow your leader's example.

Because I know about those big heroes of the faith that are thrown into the lion's den, and that's amazing faith. But what about the 21st century, when someone who claims to try and live according to the scripture hits real-life crises that we face in our day? What do they respond like when bad things happen to them, or injustice traverses their life, and now they're oppressed or opposed?

How do they respond to that? What's their marriage like? How do they keep priorities intact in the midst of the challenges and distractions of the 21st century? You should have people in mind that you know, who teach you the word of God, that you say, "What would they do? How do they handle it?"

Now, one of the first objections I think most people have is they cross their arms and lean back and say, "Well, these men have feet of clay. Just remember that. They're not perfect." Now, no one said they were. And in scripture, even the apostolic band made it very clear, we're not saying we're perfect. But neither is your golf instructor, right? Think about that one. Hits a hole-in-one on every par three? No.

But I trust he's a little bit better at applying the mechanics of the golf swing than you are. That's why you go to him for instruction. He teaches you the game. Occasionally, he'll hit it into the rough or the sand trap. But one of the great things about having a golf instructor, which I don't have, is that he helps you get out of those with some skill, right?

When you watch him hit it into the trap, he teaches you how to get out of the trap. We're not claiming that we need perfect leaders, but we do understand that in their imperfection, there is something about their leadership that we should follow. That is a good and godly thing to affirm in your thinking. It's not ungodly. You need to thoughtfully, not blindly, follow your leader's example. Verse seven of Hebrews chapter 13.

Now, if you think verse seven was uncomfortable, here comes verse 17. Are you ready for this one? "Obey your leaders. Submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them, so their work will be a joy and not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you." Obey, obey, submit, submit. I understand the reluctance here.

The scripture knows there are limits to this. This is not blind, mindless allegiance to doing whatever people say who hold a Bible and call themselves pastors. There are limits, and so we need to affirm that up front before we can ever even wrestle with what this means for us. We need to know the biblical limits.

Because from the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament all the way through the book of Revelation, the warning is watch out for false teachers. Is that not a theme in the Bible? Watch out for false teachers. Not everybody who calls themselves a pastor do you need to obey. As a matter of fact, look at this passage with me in Titus, Titus chapter one. Before we talk about what it means to obey my Bible teachers and follow their examples to the place of obedience, then I need to know the limits. I need to understand when it's right and when it's wrong.

Verse 10, Titus 1:10: "There are many rebellious people," and you'll find that. They're rebelling against God and his word, but they're up there talking, they're mere talkers. And one thing you find, if you look deep enough, is that they're deceivers. They don't tell the truth. The problem was this group of what Paul or we sometimes call the Judaizers—old translations call it that—who wanted to get people to compromise this clear, clean biblical New Covenant position to embrace the rituals and the outside forms of old Judaism, and they were trying to get everybody to compromise.

They're constantly pointed out in scripture, if you look carefully, that they're deceptive and hypocritical liars. That's what they're called in the Bible. And he says watch out for those because they're in that group constantly trying to pull you away from the purity of the gospel. He says about this, he doesn't say blindly obey them because they've got a Bible in their hand and they claim to be pastors.

He says, "They must be silenced." That's his prayer for those people because they're ruining whole households by—now underscore this—teaching things they ought not to teach. You do remember that the assumption in Hebrews 13 is that the teachers he's presenting to the congregation are good teachers, biblical teachers. And he says here, there are people that teach things they ought not to teach, and for the sake of dishonest gain, because you look under the surface in false teachers and you usually find some twisted self-motivating interests.

So this is not some kind of open-ended, mindless droning of "I just gotta obey the pastor, whatever the pastor says." But you do need to choose your pastors wisely. That when he speaks about the word of God, it checks out. I can see that he's speaking the truth, not rejecting the truth. Now, once you find that, now here comes the command. Back to it, verse 17.

Assuming all that's the case, against the backdrop of the warnings of the rest of the New Testament, obey your leaders and submit to their authority. Number two on your outline, let's just codify that in this simple phrase: you need to graciously obey your leader's directives. Graciously obey your leader's directives. Obey them and submit to their authority. Their authority, they will give you guidance. They will give you directives. They will give you things that they want you to do, biblical counsel.

And you need to, not reluctantly, not belligerently, you need to graciously comply with that. Graciously obey it. Because they're your pastors. And if you're not going to obey your pastors, then find some pastors that you will obey. Because they're called, according to this text, to keep watch over you as men who must give an account. But you're called to graciously do what they say.

Now, pastors, if they're good-hearted and teaching the truth, they're very careful about what they say that you should do. But you do get directives from them all the time. Have you noticed that? You come here, you come to preaching, we open the Bible, and the preacher stands up after studying this text for a long time. He says, "Here's what we ought to do as a result of this passage." If you go to the church for biblical counseling—"I need help, my marriage needs help"—and you come in and a pastor sits you down and gives you biblical counsel, you are to take the counsel.

If they give you direction, you're to follow the direction. It comes with the authority of the office of leader in this text, of pastor, and you need to do what they say. Again, is this mindless? Is this a drone? No. If your leaders can't be trusted, if your leaders are giving you things that aren't true, go somewhere else. Find a church where the leaders are doing the right thing, and then you need to obey them and submit to their authority.

The scripture says you'll have plenty of directives. And let me just stretch this here to the place of recognizing that even the programming structure of the church is not just like filling time during the week. The things that are offered to you, even in the announcements, as a pastor gets up and says, "Here's what's going on at the church." And I think if you're a part of this thing, you should be a part of that.

If you're at this life stage, you should think about being a part of that. And small groups, you know it's important, you need to be a part of that. You need to recognize that God is granting authority to your spiritual leaders to give you directives in your life. And again, if you say, "Well, now we're just so far away, this is just so Jim Jones, I can't take it." Remember the implication of the passage. It says that if you obey them, middle of verse 17, their work will be a joy.

It's much better to lead people that are leadable. They're compliant, and they want to do the right thing, and they take your advice and counsel. But if it's a burden, in other words, you don't obey them and they're always pounding their head against the wall in trying to lead people who don't want to go the direction they're leading, the Bible says that would be of no advantage to you.

Now, let's first of all invert that. If you do make it a joy and you're compliant to the directives of your pastoral team, here's the deal: it will be an advantage to you. Do you see we're back to the James 1:25 principle? If you do what the pastors tell you to do, from the directives on the overhead on a weekend Bible teaching, to the directives of a pastor about small group leaders at a weeknight Bible study, or to the directives you get for your marriage in biblical counseling, you will be blessed.

It will be an advantage to you. If you don't do it, it won't be an advantage to you. It is all about the blessing of God that is mediated through the directives of biblical leaders. That is what the Bible is teaching, and you and I just need to embrace that. I will be blessed if I follow the directives of my pastoral team. That's what I should do.

Invert it for just a second. Back to where it is in the text. If you don't do it, it's not an advantage. And I think there's a bit of an implied threat here, is there not? Jot this in the margin if you would: 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 8. After all the directives about how they were to conduct their lives, the punchline in that text is this: "He who rejects this instruction does not reject man, but rejects God." How often do we see God taking it personally when his people don't respond to God's leaders? All the time.

Another one to jot down in the margin might be Numbers chapter 14. When the people grumbled against and fought Moses and Aaron in that text, the Bible says that God comes on the scene in Numbers 14 and says, "How long will these people complain against me? How long will these people treat me with contempt?" Do you see how personally he takes that?

Now, again, it's assuming that you're going to a church where the directives are biblical and the pastoral counsel is wise and the leaders are integrity. And that is a situation where you just need to say, "You know what? I need to do it because it's going to be an advantage to me and if I don't, it will be a detriment to me." And again, if you're thinking, "Well, that's just too one-sided." It's not one-sided. Look at what we just blew right over in verse 17.

"They keep watch over you as men who"—here it comes, it should scare you, future pastors and current pastors—"men who must give an account." And then what needs to be cleaned up there is what we cleaned up in our eschatology series. When you get to heaven, you're not just going to high-five all the saints and give Jesus a great big hug and say it's great to be here, and he's going to say, "Great, here's the keys to your palatial mansion and have a great eternity."

You understand you're going to go through this thing called the Bema Seat of Christ. And the Bible says, here's a good passage for you, James chapter 3 verse 1: "Let not many of you become teachers, because we who teach will incur a stricter judgment." Here's the deal. Your judgment's going to be one thing. Let's just get personal. My judgment's going to be another thing altogether. My judgment is going to be much stricter than your judgment.

I know I'm the guy throwing up imperatives for you every week and saying do this, do this, do this, do this. And because that's my role, and because your teenager's youth pastor has that role, we are, as teachers of the Bible, going to incur a stricter judgment, or in this case, we're going to have to give an account. You remember the Bema Seat judgment lecture we did? That will not be a day of just high-fiving everybody.

That'll be a day when I have to answer for my leadership. I have to give an account for the things that I told people to do. I have to give an account for things that I didn't let people do, or neglected to tell them. The text says I'm supposed to be watching out after the congregation entrusted to my care, and every pastor has to recognize you're going to incur stricter judgment. You want to on the Bema Seat judgment have a pretty cool day? Don't become a pastor. It ain't going to be cool for us pastors. Everybody else is going to be peeking around the corner to watch as all the pastors line up. Because on judgment day for the pastors, that's going to be a strict time, a rough time.

So this is not a one-sided thing where the pastor sits with his big, flowing train and his scepter and he just gets to tell everybody what to do. How sweet a job is that? That's not how it's viewed in scripture. It's that God is going to scrutinize my life a whole lot more closely than he scrutinizes yours. That's the biblical teaching. So, graciously obey your leader's directives. Don't do it blindly, be a good Berean, but recognize that we will give an account to God for our directives. Biblical counselors, opening up a Bible telling you what to do with your relationship, your marriage, your whatever, they will incur a stricter judgment. Pick your leaders carefully because this is the requirement for you and your church leaders.

Verse 18: "Pray for us." That's what the leader who writes this book to the congregation that he's obviously intimately acquainted with and preaching to here, he says, "Pray for us. Pray for us and we're sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way." I mean, we're trying to live up to the high calling of the leaders in scripture, of a pastor.

He says, "And I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon." Apparently, there was some historical circumstance, perhaps imprisonment, perhaps some kind of death threat. I don't know what it was, but the pastor here had some particular issues and he's saying pray for me because I'm facing some hard times, so you guys pray for me.

Well, in the passage so far we have, well, you should defer to the example of your leaders, you should defer to the directives of your leaders, and thirdly, you should be deferring to the importance of your leader's life to the extent that you're saying, "I am giving you more prayer time than I'm giving other people. I'm focusing on you before God in prayer. I'm praying for you."

And not just like, "Yeah, bless the pastor." I am being specific. If he has needs and problems and pressures, I'm going to pray specifically for him and every other person in my life that teach the word of God and lead your spiritual life. Those people you need to be praying for. Number three on your outline: you need to be ardently praying. That's what he's asking for here.

And here's the deal. What I'm saying to you is that I need prayer more than the next guy. Somebody's going, "Yeah, you probably do." No, I do. I need prayer more than most people in this room because the scripture says the job that I'm doing is vulnerable to a kind of attack and opposition and pressure and labor that most people's lives aren't subjected to. There's a kind of difficulty about this job.

I know, here, I'm feeling like 2 Corinthians at this point. Here's the very uncomfortable part of the sermon. 2 Corinthians, Paul has to defend, show people what his life's all about and his ministry, and he says, "I'm insane to say this. I know this is crazy, and I'm out of my mind to tell you this." I feel the same exact way. I'm not blowing my own horn. I'm just telling you you need to know that the ministry is hard.

So let's put it in biblical terms. 2 Timothy chapter 2, Paul gives examples of what it is to be a pastor. He paints word pictures and analogies for us that may help you understand that there's something about being a Bible teacher and a leader in a church that brings with it a certain kind of opposition and pressure that is unique to the Christian life. You won't find it anywhere else in the Christian life. It is uniquely difficult. 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse number one: "You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." And that is the issue. He has to be strong. Be strong.

Things you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable men, be qualified to teach. But there's also now, here's the deal, you gotta be strong because you're going to have to, verse three, "endure hardship with us like a good soldier." Because Paul, of course, was a pastor as well. And you're going to have to do it like a soldier. The first picture he paints is the ministry is like being a soldier of Christ Jesus.

Now, I know the analogies often in relationships with each other are familial analogies, brothers and sisters, right? But when it comes to church leadership, notice that the analogies aren't Papa. It's not Dad. As a matter of fact, the analogies become military when you shift to leadership in the church. Now all of a sudden, it's like warfare. That's the picture in scripture.

That you stand in a place that requires a certain kind of endurance of hardship that is like going to battle. That's what it's like. And the Bible equates the ministry to engaging in battle. And the picture is one that carries with it not only in verse number three hardship, but look at verse number four: a sacrifice of civilian life. "No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs." Why? Because he's passionate about, full-time about, pleasing his commanding officer.

Now, you gotta understand this. And again, this is not a pity party, it's not a sob story, I'm not looking for sympathy, but I don't have a life like you do. It's completely different. My life doesn't reflect the normal Orange County life that you have. And I'm not saying you got a plush life. I'm just saying the way you go about your life is different than the way I have to go about my life because of my role as a pastor and a Bible teacher.

It is different. There's a different kind of pressure, there's a different kind of opposition, there's a different set of enemies, there's a different kind of stress upon that that does not happen in the normal Christian life. The next verse points out some other aspects of this. It's like being an athlete. Verse number five: "He competes as an athlete. If he does, if anyone does, he can't get the crown unless he competes according to the rules."

Here's a thing about the ministry. You have to be careful about the rules. And let's put it this way: the scrutiny that I will receive about the way I live my life is going to be different than the way you live your life. Not only in heaven at the Bema Seat judgment, but in this life now. You do understand you have freedoms to do things as a Christian I could never get away with. You understand that, right?

You should just know that, sympathize for just a second and think and extrapolate. My life has to be led differently than yours. I can't drive what you drive. I can't live like you live. I can't vacation in some places like you would be able to. I can't ingest or entertain myself with some things. You might even have the license to do it; I can't. The rules as a pastor are different. And anybody who's done it can tell you that the rules are just different. Part of it is the fishbowl.

Thirdly, the farmer. The hardworking farmer. Now, again, in the pastoral epistle, particularly in 2 Timothy, he's concerned about making sure that this lead pastor Timothy takes care of the rest of the pastors. So he's going to emphasize he should be the first to receive a share of the crops. So he's going to look at the benefit there, but the attachment to the word farmer helps us: hardworking.

The issue for the pastor should be that that is a hardworking job and it's a demanding job. And it certainly is. And again, as Paul said, I'm insane to tell you this. But you need to know because a lot of people view the ministry much differently than the reality. Because people start, "Well, what a great job, preach on Sunday, golf all the rest of the week. What a great job. I gotta get a job like that, right? Good work if you can get it."

What are you talking about? Do you have any clue what the pastor's life is like? Really, seriously. Not to mention I can't even eat a meal without hobnobbing and talking, which is fine, I love it, come up and say hi to me when I'm eating a meal. But the bottom line is my work schedule just—