Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Shepherd’s Motive: Volitional Eagerness Versus Mercenary Avarice in the Office of Elder

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The Shepherd’s Motive: Volitional Eagerness Versus Mercenary Avarice in the Office of Elder · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello and welcome back to Reform Thinking.
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  I'm your host and I'm joined again by my colleague for
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  another deep dive into Scripture.
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  It's good to be here. As always for anyone new, we're
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  two Protestant Christians who hold to the Westminster
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  Confession of Faith, and our goal here is really just a thing
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  through the text to see what God has revealed.
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  To think his thoughts after him as best we can.
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  And today we are opening up first Peter chapter 5, looking
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  at verses one through 4. This is a passage that I think
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  acts as a mirror for anyone in ministry.
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  And to be honest, the reflection it shows can be, well, pretty
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  terrifying. Terrifying is a good word for
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  it. Yeah, this passage doesn't
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  really care about your resume or, you know, your public
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  persona. It just goes right for the
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  jugular, straight to the condition of a shepherd's heart.
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  It does, and Peter sets up this really stark contrast, this
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  hypothesis between shameful gain, which is estrocharibus in
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  the Greek, and eagerness or protheentis.
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  It's a really intense look at the pastoral office.
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  It is a rigorous examination. So what I find striking right
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  out of the gate is the context. I mean, if you're just reading
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  through the letter, Peter has been just hammering this theme
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  of suffering. He calls his readers elect
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  exiles. He talks about a fiery trial
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  back in Chapter 4. Right.
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  These are people under immense pressure.
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  Exactly. They're facing persecution,
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  social ostracism, maybe even, you know, the threat of real
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  physical harm. And then bam, he pivot straight
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  into a discussion about the qualifications for elders and he
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  zeroes in on money and motive. It does feel a bit disconnected
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  at first, doesn't it? It really does.
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  It's like, why are you talking about the bank account when the
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  whole building is on fire? Why this topic right now?
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  Well, I think Peter understands something fundamental about, you
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  could say, the sociology of pressure.
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  When the church is under attack from the outside, that's the
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  suffering, the fiery trial, the internal leadership, the
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  structure. It becomes a matter of life and
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  dust. So it's not a distraction, it's
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  actually the most relevant thing he could talk about.
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  I think so. The shepherd is weak, or if his
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  motives are compromised. The wolves don't just scatter
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  the flock, they get in and they devour it.
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  Suffering has this way of acting as a a clarifier.
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  A clarifier? How so?
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  It exposes what's really going on in a man's heart.
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  It reveals whether he sees ministry as a calling from God
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  that he would die for, or if it's just a job that, you know,
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  owes him a living. It draws a bright line between a
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  shepherd who feeds the flock and a shepherd who feeds on the
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  flock. That's exactly, and historically
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  you can see it time and again. When the pressure mounts, that
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  single distinction becomes the difference between a church that
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  endures and a church that just crumbles.
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  So this isn't just about, say, balancing the church budget or
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  some kind of abstract financial ethics.
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  Not at all. It's about the twin pressures
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  that are always on the church, sufferings from the outside and
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  temptation from the inside. Peter is arming them to face
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  both. OK, so let's get into the text
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  itself, verse 1 of chapter 5. I find the way Peter introduces
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  himself here just fascinating. He doesn't pull rank, He doesn't
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  say, I, the chief of the apostles, I'm now commanding
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  you. No, he does the opposite.
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  He uses this very specific, very humble term simprespeteros,
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  which means fellow elder. Think about that.
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  This is Peter, the man who walked on water, at least for a
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  bit. He saw the transfiguration.
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  He was personally commissioned by the risen Christ on the
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  beach. If anyone had the authority to
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  just issue a command, it was him.
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  But he doesn't. He appeals to them as a Co
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  presbyter and equal. He comes alongside them.
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  He identifies himself not by his Apostolic status, but by his
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  proximity to the cross. He says he's a witness of the
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  sufferings of Christ. And that phrase right there
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  seems to set up the whole theological framework for the
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  passage, doesn't it? He says he witnessed the
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  sufferings and then in the next breath he says he's a partaker
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  in the glory that is going to be revealed.
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  Yes, it's that cruciform pattern we see all through the New
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  Testament. Suffering now, glory later.
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  Not the other way around. Never the other way around.
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  And that's the governing dynamic for the Christian life, but
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  especially for a pastor. If you get that order wrong, if
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  you try to grasp the glory now or the reward now, you will
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  inevitably become a mercenary. You're trying to cash out too
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  early. You're trying to cash out your
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  stock options before they vested.
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  Exactly, Peter is saying to these elders, look, I saw Christ
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  suffer. I know first hand that the crown
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  only comes after the cross. Do not try to reverse that
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  divine order in your own life and ministry.
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  Which is the perfect setup for the central command in verse 2?
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  Shepherd's the flock of God that is among you.
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  And that little possessive phrase of God has always just
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  stopped me in my tracks. It's not your flock.
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  That changes the whole ethical landscape, doesn't it?
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  If I lend you in my car, you're going to treat it a lot
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  differently than you treat your own.
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  Right. You're terrified of getting a
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  scratch on it because you have to answer to me, the owner.
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  And elders are stewards. That's the key.
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  They're watching over children that don't belong to them,
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  children that God the Father purchased with the blood of His
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  own Son. The moment you start seeing the
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  people in the pews as your property or your resource to be
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  used, you've committed a kind of theft against God Himself.
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  And Peter defines this shepherding roll, some really
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  active verbs. It's not a passive, you know,
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  sit in your office kind of roll, he says.
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  They are to exercise oversight. Episcopal counties.
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  Yes, that's a rich, comprehensive metaphor.
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  Shepherding means feeding, which involves sound doctrine.
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  It means guarding, which is protecting the sheep from
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  doctrinal error. In wolves it means binding up
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  wounds, which is passive care and counseling.
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  But oversight adds another layer.
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  It implies vigilance. It does.
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  It's the picture of a watchman on the wall.
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  You're constantly scanning the horizon.
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  You're looking for dangers they can't see yet.
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  It's active, it's protective, and let's be honest, it's
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  completely exhausting work. Which is probably why he pivots
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  so quickly from the what to the how.
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  He doesn't just say Shepherd, he gives these three critical
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  contrast 3 not this, but that. Diagnostic statements for the
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  heart. Right.
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  He lays them out not under compulsion but willingly, not
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  for shameful gain, but eagerly, and not domineering but being
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  examples. And while they're all connected,
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  we really want to drill down on that middle pair today.
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  The money and the motive. Not for shameful gain, but
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  eagerly. I think that's right, because
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  that middle 1 is often the engine of the other corruptions.
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  The Greek term he uses for the negative part of that command is
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  I shook reduce. And that's a compound word.
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  It is. It's made of two parts Icros,
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  which means shameful, disgraceful or ugly, and Kurdos
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  which means gain or profit. So shameful gain.
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  It seems straightforward. It is, but there's a nuance we
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  can miss. In the wider Greco Roman world,
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  Kurdos profit wasn't a dirty word.
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  If you were a merchant, seeking profit was the whole point.
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  It was a marketplace virtue. But Peter drags that marketplace
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  value into the sanctuary. And he says, if you do this here
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  with God's flock, it becomes a Cyprus, it becomes shameful.
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  So it's not just greed in a generic sense.
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  It's the specific sin of seeking profit in a way that debases and
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  dishonors the sacred office of an elder.
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  It's a gain that leaves a moral stain.
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  I think we need to be really careful here not to limit our
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  definition of this to say embezzlement.
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  When we hear shameful gain, our minds immediately go to the
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  pastor with his hand in the offering plate.
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  And I mean, obviously that fits the description.
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  Of course, that's the most blatant form.
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  But the concept of gain here is so much broader than just cash,
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  isn't it? Oh.
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  Absolutely, If we only look for outright theft, we'll miss 90%
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  of the sin gain. Here is any currency that
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  profits the self at the expense of the ministry.
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  OK, so give me some examples. What are these other currencies?
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  Well, comfort is a big one. Comfort is a currency.
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  If a pastor deliberately avoids confronting a messy, difficult
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  sin situation in the church because he just wants a peaceful
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  life, he. Doesn't want the conflict.
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  He doesn't want the conflict. He is purchasing his own comfort
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  at the direct cost of the church's purity and that
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  person's soul. That is a textbook example of
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  shameful gain. Prestige is another huge 1
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  applause. The currency of the ego?
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  Yes, using the church as a platform to build a personal
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  brand. If my preaching becomes a way
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  for me to sell my books, or to get invitations to speak at
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  conferences, or, you know, to become famous on the Internet.
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  You're monetizing the pulpit. You're monetizing the pulpit.
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  You're using the bride of Christ as a stepping stool for your own
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  ambition. You might be gaining status, but
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  you're doing it by climbing on top of the very sheep you were
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  called to carry. It's a complete inversion of the
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  role. It creates what you called a
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  transactional trap. The moment I start needing
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  something from the sheep, whether it's their money or
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  their praise or just their cooperation, so my life is
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  easier. I've stopped being their
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  shepherd. I've become their manager.
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  Or their performer. You become a performer.
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  And what happens when you're a performer?
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  You inevitably have to soften the truth.
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  You cannot tell your customers that they are wretched sinners
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  in desperate need of a Savior if you're terrified they're going
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  to take their business, their tithe somewhere else.
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  And that connects back to the other two contrasts Peter makes.
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  It's the methods test, right? If you're pursuing shameful
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  game, you will eventually have to use compulsion.
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  That's the first negative. To get it, you'll have to guilt
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  people, manipulate them into giving or serving, and then
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  you'll have to become domineering, the third negative.
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  To protect it, you have to crush any dissent to keep the revenue
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  stream flowing and your platform secure.
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  A shepherd who just wants the wool for himself has to be rough
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  with the sheep. He has to be.
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  But Peter thankfully doesn't just leave us with that negative
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  diagnosis. He immediately gives us the
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  positive counter command, but eagerly.
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  The Greek word there is prothemus.
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  Prothomis, What does that word paint a picture of?
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  It literally means something like forward spirited or forward
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  hearted. It comes a pro meaning forward
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  and simos meaning spirit or passion.
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  The image is of a runner in the starting blocks just waiting for
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  the gun. Leaning into it.
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  Leaning into it, or like a soldier who steps forward for a
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  dangerous mission before the commanding officer even finishes
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  asking for volunteers. It's a readiness, an eagerness
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  that isn't holding back. And you can see how starkly that
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  contrasts with the first negative he gave not under
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  compulsion. Right.
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  Compulsion, anacostars in Greek, is the attitude of a draftee.
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  I have to do this job or I'll get in trouble.
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  It's my duty. It's a grind.
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  It's a grind, but eagerness. Rothemus is the attitude of the
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  volunteer. I get to do this.
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  It's my joy. But, and this is really crucial
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  distinction, we're not just talking about personality types
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  here. Right.
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  This isn't about being a type A high energy, entrepreneurial
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  kind of person. No, you can have a very
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  energetic, ambitious pastor who is eagerly building a Kingdom
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  for himself. That's not Profymus, that's just
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  ambition wearing a clerical collar.
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  The eagerness Peter's talking about has a different source.
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  So if it's not natural ambition or personality, where does this
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  spiritual eagerness come from? It's theological.
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  It has to be in our tradition. We talk a lot about the grammar
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  of grace, the indicative. What God has already done for us
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  in Christ always proceeds and empowers the imperative what we
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  are then called to do. The reality comes before the
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  command. Exactly.
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  And true pastoral eagerness is a direct response to the Gospel
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  Indicative. The logic is because the Good
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  Shepherd freely laid down his life for me, a Sinner, I now
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  freely and evilly lay down my life for the sheep he's
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  entrusted to me. The motive is overwhelming
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  gratitude, not a desire for purchase.
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  So I'm not serving in order to earn a wage from God or man.
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  No, you're serving because you've already been bought with
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  the price. The precious blood of Christ
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  that changes everything. It's helpful, I think, to try
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  and visualize this. What does the eager elder
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  actually look like in the wild? It's probably not the guy who is
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  obsessed with the stage lighting and the branding and the growth
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  metrics. No, probably not.
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  The eager elder is the one who doesn't procrastinate on the
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  painful, costly parts of obedience when the phone rings
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  at 2:00 in the morning because there's been a tragedy in the
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  church. He doesn't groan and hit snooze.
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  He doesn't groan and start calculating how tired he's going
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  to be for his sermon prep the next day.
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  He gets up and he goes. He engages in the deeply
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  unglamorous work, visiting the member with dementia who I don't
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  even remember he was there, rebuking the wealthy donor who
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  is caught in the public sin, spending hours in prayer for his
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  people when absolutely no one is watching.
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  That unseen element? That seems to be the real litmus
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  test, doesn't it? I think it is the hireling, the
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  mercenary he works for, the eye service he performs when there's
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  an audience. But the eager shepherd, the one
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  driven by Protheimus, he laborers when there is 0
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  immediate ROI, no return on investment, because he knows who
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  the real owner of the flock is, and he knows that owner sees
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  everything. Now, this fundamental battle
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  between the true shepherd and the mercenary.
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  This isn't a new problem. This isn't just a 21st century
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  televangelist issue. The Bible traces this long, dark
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  history of religious profiteering.
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  Oh. It's as old as the priesthood
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  itself. It seems that as soon as God
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  established a way for a mediator to stand between Him and man,
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  there was someone right there trying to set up a toll booth.
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  The classic Old Testament archetype for this is Balaam,
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  isn't it? Balaam is the patron St. of pay
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  to play ministry. Here's a man with a genuine
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  spiritual gift. You really could hear from God
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  the things he prophesied were true, but His heart was always
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  for sale. He was a prophet for hire.
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  Absolutely. When the enemies of God's people
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  offered him a big payday to curse Israel, he spent chapters
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  trying to find a theological loophole, some way to justify it
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  so he could take the money. The New Testament calls it the
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  Way of Balaam, and it's this sin of commodifying your spiritual
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  gifts for a personal profit. And then you have the sons of
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  Eli Hoffney and Phineas. That accountant for Samuel is
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  just. It's graphic.
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  It's visceral, isn't it? These men were priests.
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  They were supposed to be facilitating the worship of God.
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  But the text says they treated the Lord's offering with
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  contempt. They'd send their servant with a
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  fork to stick it in the pot and demand the raw meat with the fat
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  before it was even properly offered to the Lord.
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  They were feeding their own bellies with the portion that
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  belonged to God. It's the ultimate picture of the
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  shepherd eating the sacrifice instead of offering it.
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  And what was God's response? He executed them for it.
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  He took it that seriously. If we Fast forward to the New
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  Testament, the pattern continues make it's even darker with
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  Judas. It's almost too tragic to even
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  talk about. But we have to Judas was the
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  treasurer for the disciples. He was in the inner circle.
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  He heard the Sermon on the Mount from Jesus's own lips.
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  But John's gospel tells us he was a thief helping himself from
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  the money bag. Proximity to Jesus didn't cure
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  his greed. It didn't.
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  It's a terrifying thought, and eventually the internal
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  calculation in his heart tipped. He decided Jesus was worth less
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  than 30 pieces of silver. He sold the Son of God for cash.
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  That is the final horrifying destination of Ice Truck a
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  Deuce. If you love money enough, you
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  will eventually sell out Jesus to get it.
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  And we see that same spirit, maybe in a less developed form
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  in Simon Magus in Acts chapter 8.
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  He sees the apostles laying hands on people who then receive
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  the Holy Spirit. And he pulls out his wallet.
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  He tries to buy the power of the Holy Spirit.
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  That's where we get the term simony, the buying or selling of
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  church offices or spiritual power.
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  And Peter, the same Peter who is writing our text, has the
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  reaction is explosive. It is, he says to Simon, may
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  your silver perish with you because you thought you could
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  obtain the gift of God with money.
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  Peter was horrified because he saw that Simon viewed the power
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  of God as just another product on the market.
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  OK, so bringing this into the modern day, the specific
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  manifestations of this sin have shifted, but the underlying
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  spiritual DNA is identical. I think the most obvious clear
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  cut culprit has to be the prosperity gospel.
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  Oh, without a doubt, the prosperity gospel is Ishra
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  Kardus codified into an entire theology.
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  It's not subtle. It's the whole sales pitch.
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  The seed faith. Doctor Seed Faith, Yes, give me
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  $100 and God is obligated to give you back 1000.
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  It turns God into a cosmic slot machine, and the preacher is the
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  casino owner who always gets his cut.
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  It's predatory. It primarily targets the poor
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  and the desperate. And it is structurally.
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  Evil. And here's where I want to push
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  us and our listeners a bit harder.
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  Most of the people listening to this are probably not sending
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  checks to televangelists, but there are much subtler, more
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  respectable forms of shameful gain that can and do infiltrate
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  even solid conservative Reformed churches.
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  The silent killers, yes. We talked about this in our
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  prep, the idea of donor capture. This is huge, and it's basically
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  James chapter 2 in action. A wealthy family joins the
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  church. They're good people, they love
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  the Lord, and they ties significantly.
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  Maybe they're giving accounts for, say, 15 or 20% of the
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  entire church budget. OK, So what happens?
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  Well, slowly, subconsciously, the elders can begin to treat
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  that family differently. A different set of rules
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  applies. How does that play out in
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  practice? It often results in what you
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  could call a softened truth. Maybe the pastor knows he needs
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  to preach a hard series on the idolatry of wealth or on
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  Christian business ethics, but he hesitates.
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  He pulls his punches because he's afraid of offending the big
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  giver. Or it results in uneven
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  discipline? Exactly.
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  A poor single mom in the church gets caught in a particular sin,
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  and she's brought under discipline almost immediately.
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  But when the biggest donor in the church gets caught in the
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  same sin, well, suddenly we need to be pastoral.
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  We need to show patience and nuance.
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  We manage them because we feel we can't afford to lose their
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  financial support. Right.
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  And that is compulsion in a different disguise.
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  The pastor feels compelled, He feels pressured to keep the
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  institutional machine funded. And so he compromises his
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  prophetic voice. You cannot speak truth to power
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  if you were secretly on powers payroll.
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  Another modern form is what we could call platform driven
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  ministry. We live in an attention economy,
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  and for many, the new form of gain isn't just dollars, it's
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  clicks, views and followers. And we all know that controversy
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  is the fastest way to get clicks.
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  So you see this temptation for pastors to stop shepherding the
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  actual people in the room, the flock God has actually given
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  them and for whom they will give an account, and to start
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  performing for the algorithm. They become content creators 1st
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  and pastors second. Yes, and it leads directly to
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  the celebrity pastor phenomenon, where the leader becomes so big
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  he's effectively insulated from all accountability.
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  He's surrounded by a court of yes men and no one can challenge
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  him. That is a form of shameful gain,
• 18:46
  gaining a Kingdom where you are the king, built on the back of
• 18:49
  God's flock. It's probably worth mentioning
• 18:51
  the historical Reformed polemic here too.
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  We can't forget that the Protestant Reformation was
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  largely sparked by this exact issue.
• 18:59
  Indulgences. The sale of indulgences.
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  Right, you have Johann Tetzel going around selling
• 19:03
  certificates that supposedly reduced time in purgatory, all
• 19:06
  to raise money to fund the construction of Saint Peter's
• 19:09
  Basilica in Rome. It was the blatant monetization
• 19:12
  of God's grace. And the Reformed cry, Luther's
• 19:15
  cry, was that grace is gratis. It's free it.
• 19:19
  Is a gift. You cannot buy it, you cannot
• 19:21
  earn it, and the church dares not sell it.
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  Any attempt, however subtle, to turn the free grace of God into
• 19:27
  a revenue stream is at its heart, a betrayal of the gospel.
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  Now we have to be careful here and introduce some important
• 19:33
  nuance or we risk misapplying Peter's words.
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  First, Peter 5 is not saying Pastor should be poor and
• 19:39
  starving. No, absolutely not, and the rest
• 19:41
  of the New Testament is very clear on this point.
• 19:44
  Paul says in First Timothy 5, quoting the Old Testament, You
• 19:47
  shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the
• 19:50
  laborer deserves his wages. So the church has a positive
• 19:54
  duty to pay its pastors. A duty, not just a suggestion.
• 19:58
  The OX principle, as some call it, is really about preventing
• 20:01
  distraction. What do you mean?
• 20:03
  The ox needs to be fed so it can keep doing the work of threshing
• 20:07
  the grain. In the same way, if a pastor is
• 20:10
  forced to work two or three side jobs just to feed his family, he
• 20:14
  cannot devote himself, as the apostles did, to prayer and the
• 20:17
  ministry of the Word. So paying a pastor a sufficient,
• 20:21
  even generous salary is actually a way of serving and protecting
• 20:24
  the flock. It is.
• 20:26
  It ensures they have a shepherd who is focused, prepared and
• 20:29
  available to them. The issue is not whether a
• 20:32
  pastor is paid. The issue is the posture of his
• 20:35
  heart toward that pay. So where is the line?
• 20:38
  How do we, or how does an elder himself, distinguish between
• 20:41
  lawful support and mercenary greed?
• 20:43
  I think it comes down to posture and goal.
• 20:45
  Lawful support is received as a steward.
• 20:47
  It's received with contentment, with gratitude, and with full
• 20:50
  accountability to the church. The goal of that support is to
• 20:53
  create freedom for ministry. Where is the mercenary?
• 20:55
  The mercenary pursues money as an owner.
• 20:58
  He sees it with a sense of entitlement.
• 21:00
  He manipulates and leverages his position to get more.
• 21:03
  And the goal is not freedom for ministry, but personal
• 21:06
  enrichment for ministry. There's a practical test for
• 21:09
  this, isn't there the preaching test?
• 21:10
  Yes, for any church or any elder asks this one question.
• 21:14
  Is the pulpit free? Can the pastor preach without
• 21:18
  fear on the sin of greed? On hell?
• 21:20
  On repentance? On radical self denial?
• 21:22
  Without worrying about losing his income.
• 21:24
  If he has to check the donor list before he finalizes his
• 21:27
  sermon, note then. The pulpit has been bought and
• 21:29
  paid for. If money controls the message,
• 21:31
  it is shameful game. But if the message of God's Word
• 21:35
  controls the money, meaning he preaches the whole counsel of
• 21:37
  God regardless of the financial cost, then he is a faithful
• 21:41
  steward. OK so since we're reformed, we
• 21:44
  believe in total depravity. We don't fully trust anyones
• 21:46
  heart, not even our pastors. So we don't just rely on good
• 21:49
  intentions, we need safeguards. How does our theology, our
• 21:52
  polity, protect the church from this?
• 21:54
  The Westminster Confession gives us the right theological
• 21:57
  categories to start with first. It defines the nature of office.
• 22:01
  It says church power is ministerial and declarative, not
• 22:04
  magisterial. Meaning elders are servants, not
• 22:07
  Lords. They are servants who declare
• 22:09
  what the king has already said. They are not Lords who make up
• 22:12
  their own rules. If you genuinely believe you are
• 22:15
  a servant, you don't develop a sense of entitlement to the
• 22:18
  master's wealth. And then we have structural
• 22:20
  practical safeguards in our church, government or polity.
• 22:24
  Right. The first and most important
• 22:25
  line of defense is the plurality of elders.
• 22:29
  You notice Peter addresses the elders, plural.
• 22:32
  It's never a one man show. If you have a board of say, 7
• 22:35
  men prayerfully looking at the budget together, it is much,
• 22:38
  much harder for one man's greed to take root, or for one wealthy
• 22:42
  donor to capture the leadership. It answers the question, who
• 22:45
  watches the Watchmen? It does, and in a Presbyterian
• 22:47
  system, there's another layer connectional accountability.
• 22:51
  The local church is not an independent island.
• 22:54
  If the local session of elders becomes corrupt or compromised,
• 22:57
  there is a higher court, the presbytery, to appeal to.
• 23:01
  It's a system of checks and balances designed specifically
• 23:04
  to account for human sinfulness. And on the ground, this has to
• 23:08
  mean a commitment to total financial transparency.
• 23:10
  Absolute, uncompromising transparency.
• 23:13
  Clear, detailed budgets that are available to the congregation.
• 23:17
  Independent financial reviews or audits.
• 23:19
  Multiple non related signatories on every single check.
• 23:23
  No secret discretionary funds that only the senior pastor
• 23:26
  controls. Never.
• 23:27
  A discretionary fund without oversight is just an invitation
• 23:30
  to temptation. Transparency protects the
• 23:33
  faithful elder from false suspicion, and it protects the
• 23:35
  church from a potentially unfaithful 1.
• 23:37
  So as we're coming toward the end of our time, we need to talk
• 23:40
  about the cure. How does a man actually
• 23:42
  cultivate this prothomist, this holy eagerness?
• 23:45
  It can't just be a matter of willpower.
• 23:47
  It can't. You cannot simply grit your
• 23:50
  teeth and say today I will not be greedy.
• 23:52
  You'll fail by lunchtime. Sinful desires aren't conquered
• 23:56
  by willpower. They have to be displaced by a
• 23:58
  stronger, better affection. The gospel remedy.
• 24:01
  It has to be the gospel. The only cure is a deeper union
• 24:05
  with Christ. We learn to shepherd eagerly by
• 24:08
  looking at the Good Shepherd. We meditate on the fact that he
• 24:11
  who is infinitely rich in glory for our sakes, became poor so
• 24:15
  that by his poverty we might become rich.
• 24:17
  When that reality truly grips your heart.
• 24:19
  Greed starts to look pathetic. It loses its power.
• 24:23
  You begin to realize I already have everything of value in
• 24:25
  Christ. What can this world possibly
• 24:28
  offer me that's better than Him? And Peter brings it all home
• 24:30
  with that eschatological focus in verse 4 and when the chief
• 24:33
  Shepherd appears. This is the horizon.
• 24:36
  This is the perspective that changes everything.
• 24:38
  This is how a pastor survives the temptations of ministry.
• 24:41
  You have to consciously reorient your entire reward system.
• 24:44
  Looking past the immediate gain. Exactly.
• 24:47
  You have to look past the cash, the applause, the book deal, the
• 24:50
  growing platform, and you fix your eyes on the future, gain
• 24:55
  the unfading crowd of glory. Everything we chase after here
• 24:58
  on Earth fades. It all fades.
• 24:59
  Money gets inflated away, clothes get eaten by moths,
• 25:03
  reputations can be destroyed by a single tweet.
• 25:06
  But the approval of Christ, hearing him say well done, good
• 25:09
  and faithful servant, that is unfading, that is eternal.
• 25:12
  That is the only game that matters.
• 25:14
  There's both a terror and a profound comfort in that verse,
• 25:17
  isn't there? A deep terror and a deep
• 25:19
  comfort. It is a terrifying thought for
• 25:21
  the hireling, for the mercenary pastor.
• 25:23
  If you've been feeding on the flock, you need to know the
• 25:26
  chief shepherd is coming back and he's fiercely protective of
• 25:30
  his sheep. There will be a reckoning.
• 25:32
  But for the faithful shepherd. For the faithful one, it's the
• 25:34
  greatest comfort imaginable. For the pastor who feels
• 25:37
  underpaid, underappreciated, who pours out his life in late night
• 25:41
  counseling sessions and prayer meetings with no applause,
• 25:43
  Christ sees him. The Chief Shepherd knows every
• 25:45
  single unseen act of faithful service.
• 25:48
  And he is the one who brings the reward.
• 25:51
  So the final call to action seems pretty clear.
• 25:53
  For elders, it's a call to shepherd eagerly, to constantly
• 25:57
  check your heart, to nail your covetousness to the cross.
• 26:01
  And for the church, For the flock, it's a call to honor your
• 26:04
  faithful laborers, to support them well, but also to demand
• 26:07
  integrity and to build in these kinds of safeguards.
• 26:10
  Amen to that. At the end of the day, the
• 26:13
  church must be shepherded in a way that makes the gospel look
• 26:16
  beautiful and free, not like a another commercial product for
• 26:20
  sale. That, I think, is the real aha
• 26:23
  moment for me in this text, the inseparable link between your
• 26:26
  motive and your theology. You cannot have right theology
• 26:29
  with a mercenary heart. Eventually one will corrupt the
• 26:32
  other. We hope this has been a helpful
• 26:34
  deep dive for you. Indeed, and we all keep our eyes
• 26:37
  fixed on the Chief Shepherd. Until next time, this has been
• 26:40
  reformed thinking.