Kootenai Church Morning Worship

Well, if you were here last week then you don't need me to say this, but just in case you did miss it, we're kind of doing a little bit of a different series of messages over the course of the summer, having finished up in Hebrews, and I’ve sort of titled this a potpourri of messages, a very kind of eclectic blend. And in keeping with that, I walked into my office this morning and there were about twelve different packets of potpourri hanging around my office in various places. I don't know who did that, but whoever it was, well played. Congratulations. In totally unrelated news, the next series is going to be all the references to gold, silver, and precious stones in Scripture.
So today's passage is one that I considered pausing the book of Hebrews for to kind of deviate and deal with because it is tied into the subject of elders and eldership and church leaders and what the role of an elder is in the congregation. So when we were looking at Hebrews 13:17, I kind of had this passage in mind. I wanted to pause and to deal with this, and then I decided not to, but now we are coming back to Acts 20 and this address that Paul gives to the Ephesian elders and particularly the portion of this chapter that deals with his warning to them regarding false teachers and savage wolves. Every New Testament book warns of the dangers of false teaching and false teachers, except for one, and that's the book of Philemon. And I'm convinced that if Paul had gone on much longer in the book of Philemon, he probably would have included something in there about them. Jesus warned of the dangers of false prophets, whom He called ravenous wolves who come in sheep's clothing. He warned of false Christs and false prophets in Matthew 24:24.
And again, with the only exception being Philemon, every single one of Paul's letters mentions this danger. His footsteps were hounded by men, false teachers who followed him from city to city, as it were, seeking to undermine his ministry and contradict what he had taught and draw away disciples who had been won over to faith in Christ by Paul in his faithful ministry. As soon as he would leave a city, people would come in behind him and start to teach false doctrine and introduce destructive heresies. That is what happened in the regions of Galatia on Paul's first missionary journey. No sooner had he dusted the dust off his feet from those regions in Asia Minor than Judaizers arrived from the regions of Judea with an entirely different gospel message, one that incorporated works and began to draw away the disciples toward the gospel of faith plus circumcision. The apostle Paul warned and the New Testament warns of false doctrine, doctrines of demons, man-made philosophies, science falsely so-called, strange teachers, empty talkers, dogs, false prophets, false teachers, false apostles, false Christs, false signs and false miracles, deceivers and impostors, and I could triple that list without duplicating any of those references.
Two books of the New Testament deal entirely with the subject of false teaching and false teachers. That's the book of 2 Peter and the book of Jude. And a little bit of a spoiler alert, sometime probably after the first of the year I'm going to tackle one of those two books, as in our next sort of extended series, and it will probably be the book of 2 Peter, simply because I preached on 1 Peter before and I feel like I've left a door open or ajar, and I need to close that by going through 2 Peter.
And sometimes it is appropriate, as Scripture does, to name the names of false teachers because we’re told in Romans 16 to mark and avoid them. Paul names Hymenaeus and Alexander in 1 Timothy 1, and he names Alexander the coppersmith as one that did him much harm in 2 Timothy 4. And my suspicion is that Alexander the coppersmith is a different Alexander than Alexander and Hymenaeus. Otherwise the apostle Paul would not have needed to designate him as Alexander the coppersmith. So it seems that there were at least two Alexanders who plagued Paul's steps and taught false doctrine and led away the disciples. Guarding the flock against these kinds of men is one of the most solemn duties of the shepherds of the church, the elders and the pastors, and every pastor wishes it was not so. Every elder wishes that his ministry did not have to deal with false teachers and false teaching. I wish to God that all we had to do is just to preach the truth and never deal with error, but the reality is that the world is full of error and we are commanded to deal with that error and to do so sometimes very forcefully and sometimes very publicly.
So our passage that we're going to be looking at today is Acts 20:28–32. Let's read them together here. And again, this is in the context of Paul's address to the Ephesian elders. And I'll give you a little bit of the broader context here in just a moment. Acts chapter 20, beginning in verse 28—this is our text through verse 32.
28 Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
30 And from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
31 Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
32 And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. (NASB)
There is the saying that truth is timeless. In fact, we refer to timeless truth, meaning that truth never changes. And in one sense, error is equally timeless in the sense that as long as there is truth, there is also error. Because every truth has not just one counterpart to error but sometimes multiple counterparts to error, which means that there are more wrongs than there are truths. There are more errors than there are truths. Because for every truth, there are ten errors that the devil propagates and promulgates in order to deceive people. In fact, if we're going to give the devil his due, then we have to admit that he is very creative with his errors. It doesn't matter what your background is, what your religious convictions might be, what your temperament is, your disposition, your demeanor, your personality, whatever your likes and dislikes are, there is an error that is custom-designed for you. Whether it is blending of Eastern mysticism and Christianity or the syncretism of paganism and Christianity or New Age philosophy and Christianity or worldly wisdom and worldly philosophy and empty deceits and Christianity, no matter what it is, no matter what doctrine it is that would appeal to somebody, there is always one out there that will appeal to you. And so we all have to be on guard constantly because the devil is very clever, very skilled with taking things that appear to be true and promulgating them and promoting them and getting people to believe them because they look like truth.
And in an age of the internet and rapid communication, the errors breed almost as fast as they can be created. Like rabbits on spring break, they just multiply constantly online, and they can not just be given birth online, but they can spread around the world almost as quickly as you can read about them or hear about them. They propagate quickly. And I think it was Mark Twain who said before the truth has a chance to even put on its shoes, an error can travel all the way around the globe. And that was before the internet. In today's world, it’s equally as true and even more so. It is almost on a daily basis that I hear of some new novel thing that's blowing its way through the church, some fad or false doctrine that has captivated the hearts and minds of God's people. And usually there are books and programs and conferences associated with it. And just as soon as that one sort of peters out, another one comes along right behind it.
And all of these anti-truth errors and false teachers are inherently anti-Christian. It is inherently anti-truth and anti-God. In our modern world, one of the most subtle disasters, soul disasters, that has infiltrated the church is the notion that all truth is relative, all truth is personal, and all truth is oppressive. And so you hear this constantly. If you disregard somebody's truth philosophy, then you're accused of denying them or denying their being or shaming them or doing violence against them. Just to contradict somebody's heresy today is considered an act of violence, and it is treated and viewed as if you've actually perpetrated physical violence against somebody even if you just contradict their heresy or their false teaching.
And then the philosophy that all truth is relative and all truth is personal—I can have my truth and you can have your truth. I can have my feelings about a thing and you can have your feelings about a thing, and we can both be true and neither one of us is wrong—I can't think of something more soul destroying and more culture destroying and soul poisoning than that nonsense. And so we live in a world, we live in a culture, that has abandoned the whole idea of truth, and so even the act of me standing up here and saying there is truth and there is error and error must be confronted and identified inside of the church and that this is a loving thing to do to God's people, even that is seen as an act of violence in our current culture. Because it should not surprise you that there are even people within the church who have adopted this ideology, that our job as loving Christians modeling the love and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is to simply let everybody be everybody and do and believe whatever they want and make no moral judgments and certainly no truth judgments.
And the dangers never change, they just put on new dress. They blow through the church, always changing nothing but their form, never their substance. And the principles therefore of guarding the flock, why we do it, how we do it, and from whom we do it, these things never change.
So back to our text, verses 28–32. I want to zoom out and give you the context just a little bit. This address is given by the apostle Paul on his way to Jerusalem on his third missionary journey. While he was in Ephesus on that third missionary journey, he spent three years just reasoning from house to house and then he spent two years teaching in the school of Tyrannus in Ephesus, and there he had great effectiveness and he stayed there because it was a hub of ministry and Paul saw a lot of fruit from his ministry in Ephesus. You can read all of that in Acts 19. Paul spent at least two years there teaching in a school and other months before and after that having ministry in the city. And now having left the city and gone to a few other cities, he's returning on his way to Jerusalem, not expecting that he would ever return to Ephesus, not expecting that he would ever see the elders there again. And so he had decided that he wanted to be in Jerusalem by the day of Pentecost. He was in a bit of a hurry. So rather than going to the city of Ephesus and spending the time there—he knew that because of his love for those people and their love for him, he would just get sidetracked and most likely taken sort of off and kept there longer than he wanted to stay. So he narrows his focus for this address just down to the leadership of the church in Ephesus.
Look at verse 16: “Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus so that he would not have to spend time in Asia; for he was hurrying to be in Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.” So because he didn't want to be sidetracked, verse 17 says, “From Miletus [which was a shore town, a shipping town] he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church. And when they had come to him, he said to them . . .” (vv. 17–18) And now what follows is a passionate, loving, concerned address to these undershepherds, elders/pastors/bishops/overseers in the church. We saw in Hebrews 13 that it's all the same office, three different words used for the same group of men. And Paul commissions them to guard the flock.
And in verse 28–32, I'll give you this outline real quick. Paul gives to them in verse 28 first a mandate to protect the flock. Then in verse 29, he describes the men from whom we are to protect the flock, verses 29 and 30. And then in verses 31 and 32, he describes the method of protecting the flock. A mandate, then he talks about the men, and then he gives to these elders a method for protecting the flock.
Look at verse 28, first the mandate to protect the flock. “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” By the way, verse 17 and here verse 28 are the verses that we would put together to make the case that an elder is a pastor is a shepherd is an overseer, that these are the same office. Because verse 17 says he called the elders out to him, and then he says in verse 28 that they are overseers, God made them overseers, and then he commissions them to shepherd, which is the other word that is translated “pastor”—the noun form of that is translated “pastor” in the New Testament—indicating that the elders are the overseers and they are the shepherds of the church.
And he calls upon them to be on guard, to keep watch, to pay strict attention. That requires an alertness and a watchfulness and a readiness. It requires that somebody have their eyes constantly open, constantly looking out for dangers, realizing that as long as the church is in this world, the church will face the dangers that this world unleashes upon it, that we are attacked, and I'm not talking just in terms of physical attacks or physical threats to us, but the church, the true church, is attacked constantly by men who seek to undo the work of the spirit of God amongst God's people. False doctrines inside of the church are always a reality. The word beware there or be on guard is the same word that is used by Jesus in Matthew 7:15: “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” It's the same word. So Paul is there echoing the warning of the Lord Jesus calling upon these men to be on guard, to beware because false prophets come in sheep's clothing. Later on in the passage, Paul calls them ravenous wolves.
And notice in verse 28 they are to guard two things: first, yourselves, and then the flock. “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock.” They had to first protect themselves. They can't help others if they themselves are deceived, right? If a pastor, a shepherd, or an elder is gobbling up false doctrine and believing it, if he himself is deceived, then he can't be of any use in helping others ward off and understand the threats to their soul, so a shepherd has to always beware and be on guard for himself that he doesn't fall into error, that he doesn't fall into false doctrine and buy up the spirit of the age. Before you can apply the oxygen mask to somebody else in the case of emergency, you have to put it on your own face first. They tell you that every time you fly. It's the same thing with shepherding a church. You have to be on guard for yourself first of all because if a pastor and elder cannot guard himself from error, sin, temptation, deception, addiction, then he isn't guarding the flock, which is why Paul sent Timothy to the church of Ephesus. So when Paul said to Timothy, in this church which had been ravaged by wolves—he says to Timothy in chapter 4, verse 6 of 1 Timothy, “In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following.” See, in Paul's marching orders to Timothy, he says you need to be residing in sound doctrine. You need to be being nourished on the words of the faith. First Timothy 4:15–16: “Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.” He was to be on guard for himself.
Now, after Paul gives this address in Acts 20, some years later after his first imprisonment, the apostle Paul sent Timothy to the city of Ephesus because what Paul feared had happened in Ephesus, that ravaged wolves would come in and destroy the flock. That had indeed happened. And in Paul's absence, Hymenaeus and Alexander had come up and they had begun to teach things that are not fitting for men to teach. And so after his first imprisonment, Paul sent Timothy back there with the instructions in 1 Timothy 1—you need to confront these men and kick them out of the church. There was to be a confrontation there.
Second, elders are to keep on guard or be aware on behalf of the entire flock. That's the second thing; be on guard for yourselves and for the flock, and for the people that you guard, the sheep. Elders needed to be continually alert to dangers. They should be able to identify wolves, they should be willing to call them out by name, and they need to be able to refute their teachings and their doctrines. And that's just not me inventing that. That is in fact a qualification for eldership in Titus 1 where Paul writes to Titus that an elder must be one who is “holding fast to the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able [now here's the positive and the negative] both to exhort in sound doctrine [that's positive instruction] and to refute those who contradict” (v. 9). Paul says in verse 10, “For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain” (vv. 10–11).
Now does Paul sound like one of these hippie-dippie “let’s just love each other and get along” type of men? Amongst the believers, who are holding fast to the faithful word, he was very hippie-dippie “let's just love one another and get along.” But when error comes on the scene, the apostle Paul says these men must be silenced because they are teaching things that are not fitting. This requires that an elder have an understanding of the issues, the times in which he lives, the worldviews that banter around online and amongst God's people, be able to discern and identify error, and then, of course, have the backbone to stand against it and to contend earnestly for the faith and to not back down and to not care what slings and arrows are thrown at them online and in the online forums and what people say about them or what they write in their book reviews or whatever it is. Simply be able to say it and then leave the results with God. They do this because they are undershepherds, overseers of the church. Acts 20:28, again, says that the Holy Spirit has made these men overseers, and Paul commands them to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.
Shepherding is a powerful analogy because it really taps into something that everybody in that first-century agrarian culture would have understood readily and that was the value and the necessity of a shepherd doing what a shepherd was to do, which is namely to feed and to guard, to protect and to lead the sheep that were committed to his care. So a shepherd would gather his sheep together into a flock and then lead them from one grazing pasture to the next, from one source of water to the next, always looking out on the horizon for threats to their safety, whatever predator that might be, a lion or a bear or a wolf, oh my, or any one of the other predators that might have sought to destroy the sheep, and then always keeping guard for not just predators but also physical dangers in the landscape, that the sheep will not wander off a cliff or fall into a pit or get drowned in a river or fall into a lake or be injured in some way. Always guarding, always watching, always on the lookout for things that threaten the flock.
This is done by preaching and teaching the Word of God. That’s what the feeding and watering and nourishing part of an elder's job is, to nourish people through the feeding and ministry of the Word of God, which is why Paul says in verse 27—just look up one verse. He says, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27). In fact, he mentions his teaching also up in verse 20: “I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:20–21). So that's what Paul had done. He had taught them publicly. He had taught them house to house. He had taught them in the daytime. He had taught them in the nighttime. He had a continual teaching ministry whereby he warned them by the Word of God of what danger error would pose to their soul and how they could be poisoned by believing it. This is how shepherds guard the sheep. There's no accident that right after the command or his statement about teaching them publicly and from house to house and right after his statement about teaching them everything that was profitable and declaring the whole purpose of God, then he would warn them about the danger of false teaching.
The motivation for an elder's work is in verse 28: “To shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” Now that gives you the motivation, the proper motivation, for an elder of the church. They do what they do because they see the value of the church of God. They see the value of the people of God. So that a true shepherd, when he stands up behind a pulpit and looks out over his people, does not see a bunch of people who give to the ministry, a bunch of people who can proclaim his name, a bunch of people that love and adore him. He doesn't see that. Instead, he sees a people that God has committed to the charge of the shepherds of that church as blood-bought saints purchased with the most valuable thing that has ever been shed upon this planet, the blood of Christ Himself. That pure, spotless, perfect Son of God gave His blood to redeem a people and purchase them. The church is a purchased people, which sets it apart from every other people on the planet. All unbelievers, all goats, all fake believers, all those who perish everlastingly in the flames, they do not share this in common with the people of God, that we are a purchased people and we have been redeemed by the blood of God Himself.
Verse 28, by the way, is a clear and unambiguous declaration of the deity of Christ. It's Christ who shed His blood, and here Paul says that the church is purchased by God's blood. Look at verse 28: “The church of God which He [that is, God] purchased with His own blood.” That is, Christ Himself is God and shed the most precious thing possible for our salvation, our redemption.
So the believers are blood-bought people, which puts upon them a value that they would not have in and of themselves but a value that is bestowed upon them by virtue of the fact that they have been purchased by the blood of Christ. First Peter 1 says, “You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (vv. 18–19). If you had only been purchased by gold or silver, that's really not that valuable. But the blood of Christ, that makes you valuable. Which means that the motivation for a shepherd in protecting the flock from error is because he is guarding that which Christ purchased with His own blood. And therefore, to attack the church is to make yourself an enemy of God. To introduce destructive heresies into a fellowship, to teach or allow doctrines of demons, to operate as a wolf amongst the blood-bought people of God makes someone an enemy of God, and they should be treated as such, as an enemy of God and as a mortal threat to the good and well-being of the believer's soul. The shepherd's job is to know the errors, to be able to refute them, and to identify the wolves because those errors divide and poison and do great destruction inside of a church. So that's the mandate to protect the flock.
Now, I want you to notice how Paul describes the men from whom we are to protect the flock. Verse 29: “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (vv. 29–30). This was something that was concerning to Paul, and he is warning them out of love. And I want you to notice the nature of these men and then their method. Notice their nature. Paul describes them in verse 29 as savage wolves. He's continuing there the shepherding analogy that he started in verse 28. Out in an open field, away from the shelter and away from the pen, the sheep would be vulnerable to any threat, any predator that might approach them from anywhere on the other side of the horizon. And the shepherd's job was to keep watch constantly as to what might come over the hillside or come up out of the ravine and might be a threat to the flock. The word savage there is a word that describes something that is fierce, vicious, and cruel. It's used not just of wolves, but it is also used to describe burdens, like a heavy burden or something that was burdensome or crushing or oppressive. It describes something unsparing and merciless and relentless, fierce, vicious, cruel, and in a burdensome, oppressive, and unrelenting manner. That is what is being described here. There are savage wolves in the church.
Now, if you ask most Christians today, “Do you believe that there are false teachers operating within the church and even within evangelicalism?” almost every Christian will say, “Yeah, we believe that to be true because the Bible warns us about false teachers.” But then if you ask them, “Name for me one, two, three, maybe five”—I can name twenty off the top of my head without even breaking for air. But if you ask them, “Name me one or two or three,” most of them will just look at you with a deer-in-the-headlights stare, blinking their eyes, unable to even name a single false teacher because we want to know that there are false teachers in the church, but far too many people are unwilling to even identify them.
These wolves will not spare the flock. Look at verse 29. They “come in among you, not sparing the flock.” They are relentless. They are insatiable. They do not care about going easy. They're not interested in drawing away one or two disciples after themselves. False teachers and wolves in sheep's clothing will not be satisfied until they have the blood of every last believer in the congregation. Until everyone follows them, until they have destroyed everyone's lives, they are insatiable.
Alexander Strauch in his book Biblical Eldership says this—by the way, you all got that book, right? I told you in Hebrews you had to get that book. He writes this:
They're called savage wolves, a pack of large, fierce wolves who will not spare the flock from destruction. They're strong and cunning. They are persistent, and they come from every side. They are insatiable and merciless in their appetite for devouring Christians, and their presence can only bring death, confusion, and destruction.
Paul calls them savage wolves, which, by the way, is about the kindest thing that Paul says about these people amongst all of his Epistles. For instance, in the book of Philippians, chapter 3, he calls them dogs and evil workers. Now, by dogs, he doesn't mean your little poodle, which really isn't a dog, or a chihuahua or your nice, gentle, golden retriever that snuggles up next to you on the bed and likes to lay down in front of the fireplace and give you lots of love and wags his tail when you come home. That's not what he is describing. In that culture at that time, dogs were undomesticated, fierce, wild, profane, dirty, and violent creatures. Paul calls them dogs and evil workers. Then in Philippians 3 he calls them “enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction” (vv. 18–19). In the book of Titus, he calls them liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. He says that they are defiled and unbelieving and conceited. In Titus 1, he says they are detestable, disobedient, and worthless for any good deed. In Titus 3, he says they are perverted and self-condemned. In 1 Timothy 6, he says they are depraved of mind and deprived of the truth. They are twisted, depraved, wicked, greedy, immoral, divisive liars; that's 2 Peter 2. Like a dog that eats its vomit and like a pig that returns to the mud. The most damning language in all of Scripture is used for false teachers and false prophets. Savage wolves is a pretty tame description given what the rest of the New Testament says about these men and what they do.
So just in case you thought savage wolves was a bit colorful, you should read the rest of Paul's letters. These are not believers. They're not misguided Christians. They're not well-intentioned but untaught believers. We must not tolerate them in our pulpits, in our seminaries, in our churches. Their error must be confronted and reproved, and if they will not repent, then they must be removed from the congregation and put out. Paul says in Romans 16, “Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them” (v. 17). These men are divisive. They are divisive not because God's people stand for the truth. Truth is not divisive. Error is divisive. Truth unites the people of God. Error comes in and divides the people of God. So Paul says when these people come in and teach things that are contrary to sound teaching, you need to mark them and you need to turn away from them. You need to mark them and avoid them, and they must be put out. Silenced, as Paul says in Titus 1.
Notice their methodology, these men against whom we guard the flock. Verses 29–30: “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” “I know,” Paul says. He was certain. He was certain that men would come in. Why was he so certain? Because he had seen it happen time and time again. He saw it happen in Galatia. He left the regions of Galatia and the Judaizers came in and said, “Yeah, faith in Christ is good, but you need circumcision too.” He saw it happen in Corinth. As soon as Paul left the city of Corinth, even though he had spent eighteen months there, false teachers came in and began to give them a different gospel and to deceive the people, and they were being carried away by that. These men hounded Paul from city to city, watching his steps, exploiting people after he would leave the regions.
He says, “After my departure, these men will come in among you, not sparing the flock.” And they always waited until Paul was gone. They never came into the city while Paul was there. Never walked into the church to say, “I want to have an argument with you about this Old Testament passage.” They always waited until Paul was gone. You know why? Because false teachers are cowards. They don't want to sit down with the Word of God between them and have a conversation. They're cowards. And most of the time, they're mentally weak cowards who are simply there to exploit mentally weak people who are untaught and undiscerning and have not matured enough to be able to see the difference between truth and error. And these men are not brave men, they're not bold men. They're weak cowards who wait until strong people are gone and then they come in to exploit weak people. They look for weaknesses sometimes in leadership. They look for new believers, gullible believers, untaught believers. They look for the undiscerning, the vulnerable and distracted believers and prey upon them, looking for the opportunity always to divide the flock.
We've had people come into our congregation, and maybe I should say this now, just in case you're wondering, “Is Jim like—is he preparing us because there's a meeting afterwards in which he exposes somebody?” No, that's not the case at all. So I'll tell you that upfront, but we have had people come into our congregation who have then gone from a meeting with one elder to another elder talking about some doctrine that they're trying to find, some crack in the superstructure, some division in the leadership that they can get in there and sort of nose their way into that and then begin to hammer like a wedge into that doctrine to split apart the church. We've had that happen. I've been here for almost thirty years. Dave has been here for twenty years. And we've seen that happen on more than one occasion. This is what they do. They look for an opportunity to divide people, and then when they see that the leadership is strong and that the leadership is united on these issues, then eventually they leave. If a false teacher can find a church with cowardly or weak leadership, indecisive leadership, then all the better for them. That's how they view it. All the better for them. Because then they can find a way to exploit people and to exploit the flock for their own benefit.
Notice there are two approaches. First, they come in among you. They have to get inside somehow. He says they come in among you and then crop up. “From among your own selves men will arise” (v. 30). So they come in from the outside and then they pop up from the inside. Sometimes false teachers and wolves in sheep's clothing are able to get in underneath the radar because they disguise themselves well enough. They know the words to say and the things to do in order to get insinuated into the body of Christ, and then they wait and lurk there, waiting for their opportunity. And when they see their opportunity, then like whack-a-mole, they pop their head up and try and take that opportunity.
So there are two methodologies. First, they come in among you. They come in; as Jude says, they creep in unawares. The elders, as diligent and vigilant and aware and alert as they might be, sometimes miss somebody who comes in who is not truly a believer but seeks to undo the ministry in a church. They do this because they sound like Christians. They say all the right words. In other words, they are wearing the sheep's clothing. They look like sheep and they smell like sheep and they act like sheep, but underneath they are ravenous wolves. And then while the shepherds are watching outside at the horizon for the threats that might be coming into the church, they also have to be aware that behind them, inside of the flock itself, there are men who are constantly wanting to pop up and teach strange doctrines or speak perverse things.
Sometimes false teachers come into the church and insinuate themselves and even have large ministries, even have large churches. I'm talking not just about your average Christian person now but even leaders and teachers within evangelicalism. They can have large teaching platforms and even be invited to speak at big conferences. And then just about the time you start to trust them, suddenly you hear something come out of them that makes you kind of cock your head to the side and say, “That wasn't quite right.” Then you go back and you listen to it again and you're right, it wasn't quite right. It was about a quarter of a turn off. It sounds right. It's almost there but not quite there. And then you watch them for a few more years and it's another quarter of a turn off and just a little bit more perverse because this is what the word perverse means, something that is twisted or distorted.
False teachers don't always—sometimes and rarely they do this, but not always do they come into the church and just promote outright, blatant, obvious heresy. They don't come into a church like this and say Jesus Christ is not God. They never say that. But instead they take a doctrine that is the skin of the truth and they stuff it with a lie, and it looks true, it looks alluring, but like the apple that Snow White ends up eating, it's just got poison inside of it. It looks fine on the outside. It's just a quarter of a turn off, and give them a little bit more time and it's a quarter of a turn more. You're seeing this happen with leaders inside evangelicalism now who year after year adopt more and more of the philosophy of our age and the spirit of our age, and they are compromising doctrines to do so.
Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:17 that their talk spreads like gangrene, like a flesh-eating disease, like a poison, like a rot. It just goes from one person to another, from one household to another, and from one church to another. And what they're seeking is the destruction of the flock, to scatter the sheep and to exploit them for their own end. And here is their motive: to draw away, verse 30, disciples after them. False teachers want you, want us, to follow their teaching, not Scripture. And the devotion that the people of God give to the Word of God, the false teacher wants that for them. The allegiance that the people of God give to Christ, the false teacher wants that for them. So in their teaching—it's very subtle, but in their teaching, they're always the hero of every story, they're always the best example of every truth, they're always the protagonist in every drama. And they do this in order to draw away the disciples after themselves. They don't want the Word of God in the center of the congregation, everybody fellowshipping and worshipping and loving one another and serving around that Word of God. They want to displace that with themselves and become the center of that so that they have the disciples, so that people give them their allegiance and them their trust and follow after their teaching, so that nobody ever questions “Dear Leader” and nobody ever evaluates it according to the Word of God. This is the allegiance that they seek. And they pursue novelties and fresh truths and do whatever they can to get people to love them and adore them because the love and adoration that God's people give to Christ, that is the love and adoration that they resent. They want it for themselves.
Now, notice third, Paul describes the method for protecting the flock in verses 31 and 32. Verse 31: “Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one of you with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (vv. 31–32). Notice again that Paul repeats his warning. He says in verse 31, “Be on the alert.” In fact, I want you to notice three things in those two verses. I want you to notice how Paul emphasizes the watchfulness that he is commending to them. Watchfulness, be on the alert. And he repeats this warning that he gave them in verse 28, emphasizing again the need for vigilance and steadfast faithfulness in their diligence of keeping awake and not sleeping and being watchful to stay awake and ready for action at all times. The point here, Paul's point, is that the threat is always present and that watchfulness is always needed. There's never a point to let up. There's never a place where you can put down your guard. The threats are always there in one form or another. If they're not visible, they're at least hidden, but they are always there. The nature of those threats might change and the form they take changes. The severity of it may change, but their presence or their reality never does. And so, a shepherd is never able to give up his guard against false teaching and false doctrine. He emphasizes watchfulness.
Second, he emphasizes the warnings. Look at verse 31: “For a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one of you with tears.” For three years, he was diligent, living in the city of Ephesus, admonishing each one of them with tears. By the way, he says day and night. “Remembering that day and night for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish [you].” The day and night there, it's not a lie. It's not a purposeful exaggeration. It is something of a hyperbole. It doesn't mean that Paul was knocking on everybody's door at two o 'clock in the morning, saying “Hey, just want to remind you, you know, in case you're sleeping, there's false teachers out there. Just be aware,” and going to the next house and doing that. That's not what he was doing. He's just simply saying that for that entire time, constantly, he was reminding them as need came up that there is the reality of false teachers and false brethren out there, and that he never stopped doing this because this was an element constantly of his ministry. And it must be always an element of faithful ministry. There must be always in the proclamation of truth not just the promotion of sound doctrine but also the comparison of that with what is false, and as opportunity comes up and as the need is there, the refutation of that which is false, the contradicting of it, and the teaching of the true word to answer the errors and the lies of our age. And I think that we try and do that here in this church quite regularly.
Paul emphasized the warnings, laboring night and day to do so, consistently reminding them that false teachers abound and that false teachers are a real danger. Notice he says he did this with tears. This I think is an interesting reference. I did this with tears. If you know much about the ministry of the apostle Paul, then you know that he was lashed by the Jews five times with thirty-nine lashes. He suffered shipwrecks. He was hunted and hated by his brethren, the Jews and the Gentiles. He was hounded from house to house, from church to church, city to city. He was stoned and left for dead. From the moment of his conversion to the day that his head left his body, he was constantly haunted by the specter of death because people wanted him dead. He was falsely accused, he was falsely prosecuted, he was falsely imprisoned and falsely accused by Jews and by Gentiles. And you'll never read anywhere in Scripture where the apostle Paul says that any of those things caused him tears. You know what caused him tears? False doctrine. Would to God that all the people of God had such a heart. Do to us what you want, imprison us, persecute us, whatever the affliction, that will not cause me tears, but that somebody might be led astray by error from the truth and whose soul might be poisoned and whose effectiveness might be sidelined and whose family might be destroyed by error, that should cause us to grieve. Paul says to the Philippians in chapter 3, verse 18, “For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things” (vv. 18–19).
To warn somebody of false doctrine is an act of love. A hireling does not care about false doctrine. A hireling just does his job, goes through the motions, does his ministry as part of the church but is never concerned about false teaching. He doesn't worry about that. Because as Jesus said in John 10, the wolf comes or the threat comes, the danger comes, and the hireling just sits back and lets it happen. He doesn't want to confront the false teaching. He's a weak man, a cowardly man. So he doesn't confront the false teaching and deal with that and take whatever slings or arrows might come his way for the sake of the flock. Instead, he steps out of the way and lets the danger, false doctrine or false teacher, just devour the sheep right in front of him and go on to grab another sheep. “I can replace that guy; come on into the flock.” That's how hirelings do it. But a real shepherd would weep over the danger that is posed to the flock and would do everything he can to reprove that and to confront that and to try and warn people of the reality of that danger.
So notice his emphasis on watchfulness and then warnings and then third, I want you to notice the emphasis on the Word. Paul emphasized the Word. Acts 20:31–32: “Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” That is his emphasis on the Word. He commits, as an undershepherd himself in the church of Christ, he commits his people, these elders, to God. I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you that inheritance among the saints who are sanctified. He entrusts these elders to the great Shepherd of the sheep, the guardian of their souls, to the One who ultimately is able to keep them and to care for them, and commends them to God and entrusts them to His Word.
Paul's work was to warn them night and day with tears, constantly teaching them. That was his work. But at the end of the day, you can do that to a congregation of healthy and hungry people, and at the end of the day, somebody in that flock is going to get online and chase after some rabbit hole, after some false teacher, and get caught up into some false doctrine. And ultimately, as elders and teachers within the church, we love people, we teach people, we do this night and day, warning them, but all we can do is commend one another to the grace of God and say, “Now I commit you to God, ultimately recognizing that with all of my vigilance aside, with all of our alertness aside, with all of the diligence of all the people who are standing guard over the church, the good and true teachers, even with all of that diligence, the error still remains, and somebody could be taken away.” And so you can't keep people from believing error. Instead, you just have to commend them to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build them up. That sanctifying Word that builds up and protects them, counsels them, Paul gave that to them night and day, taught them publicly and from house to house, giving them the true gospel, teaching them true doctrine, and then entrusting them to God, who is able to build them up. That's the tool that the pastor-shepherd uses. That is the power, that is the instrument for protecting the flock, which is why Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4,
1 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead . . .
2 [to] preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,
4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (1 Tim. 4:1–4 NASB)
People, ultimately, there will come a time when they do not want to hear the truth. And so Paul's commission to Timothy is not “Then find a way to make the truth palatable. Find a way to make the truth less offensive.” Instead, he says, you just preach the Word. And let the chips fall where they may, commending people to the Word of God and to His grace, which is able to build them up and to present them faultless before His throne with exceeding joy.
Now, a couple words of application as we close. First, to those who are not shepherds of the flock, I would encourage you to heed the warnings of your shepherds who watch out for your soul. Encourage them in their work, be thankful for them, pray for them. And I say them, but I mean them and us because there's five of us here, and many more who actually do the function of eldership and shepherding here than just the five. Pray that they would receive the Word and obey the Word and know the Word and that they would faithfully communicate that Word to you.
And I'm saying this not for my own sake because I feel the love and affection of this body, and it is reciprocal. I love being here. I love this church. I love this body. I truly do. And I'm saying this just to encourage you to recognize those who shepherd in this way, and there are faithful men here who do this. Love them for their work's sake.
To the shepherds who are here, some, of course, my fellow undershepherds here in this body, as well as any who might be hearing these words, be diligent in the work that you have been given, be alert to the dangers that are there, spend the time to discover the threats and to warn the flock and to teach the Word and to confront the wolves, and do so with courage and boldness, taking whatever slings and arrows come your way, and plead with your people with tears, if necessary, to avoid the errors that seek to poison their souls.
And for all of us, having done all of this, we can only commend one another to the grace of God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build us up. We commit ourselves to the chief Shepherd and the guardian of our souls, and then we commit to receive the Word, which is able to build us up and to bring us complete and whole and perfect before His throne with exceeding joy, and may God preserve each and every one of us in the truth to that end.