Holiness – Roslyn Baptist Church: Recent Episodes
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To the Elders and the Flock 5 To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: 2 Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; 3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.
For those of you listening at home via the wonder of the internet, I’ll let you in on the set up work I’m doing here. I’ve just placed an ordinary green bucket on the piano with the sign “Magic Green Bucket” in front of it. We’ll get to that later when I want to make sure people are paying attention.
So, a slightly lighter start to the week than last week where we were told to buckle in and not be surprised at the suffering to come. I teach engineering communication at the Polytech and one of the things we work on with our students is how to structure emails. We always encourage them to finish an email with a clear statement about what they want the reader to do in response and then something we call a “good will” signoff. I feel like this is that action list portion of Peter’s letter.
He’s given us a lot of information, some of it quite tricky and now he’s giving us a very clear wrap up. Going forward, in response this is what I’d like you to do. It’s a friendlier portion to build up relationship heading into the goodwill sign off so that we’re inclined to do what he asks. It’s a good tactic because this is a lot easier to finish on than “do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you”.
Who are the elders among us? So first question… who are the elders among us? Not going to ask you to raise your hand if you think that you’re an elder. As a warning to those approaching 30, I expected my knees to last slightly longer so I might be putting myself in that box sooner rather than later.
And Peter isn’t talking here about physical age as much as he is spiritual age. The two can be related, it’s difficult to be fully spiritually mature while the brain development of youth is still rampaging with all its associated delights, but it’s also possible to be….more advanced in years and still very spiritually young. This means that as I look out at you today I can’t tell who is “an elder” so I’m just going to speak to all of you. Even if you feel like it doesn’t apply to you today it might one day!
Peter gives us some clues about who he is speaking to in the early verses of the passage, “To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care…” so if you are a person who is sheparding part of the flock, if you are raising children, or doing Sunday school, or attending playgroups, or helping feed people and talk to them about Jesus, if you’re making decisions at Church, if you’re helping up the front on Sundays, if you’re witnessing to your friends, there is something here for you.
Peter’s words this morning are to guide us around how we aught to behave in those roles. They’re the action list we can take out of the whole letter, the things to do going forward. “not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; 3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.” And.. spoiler alert for next week (which I can do because Mike isn’t here) the next section starts off with “in the same way you who are younger…” so no one is really off the hook!
So there are the instructions, fairly clear : Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; 3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. We’ve seen this sort of instruction throughout 1 Peter, throughout the whole gospel. Humble yourselves for one another, led by being the least. The catch here I think is “not because you must but because you are willing as God wants you to be”
Why would I want to do the dishes? There’s a movie called the breakup which stars Jennifer Anderson and Vince Vaughn. If you haven’t seen it then I don’t think I’m giving much away by telling you that the main characters break up. The point at which you know that their trouble runs deep comes after a thanks giving dinner they hosted. She is tidying up and he’s on the X-box. She asks him to come and help do the dishes and he says later, she says now please and he throws down his controller yells “fine” and heads to the kitchen. When he gets there she tells him “no this isn’t actually what I want”, so he says “but you wanted me to do dishes I’m here to do dishes” and she replies “I want you to want to do dishes” and he utters the line “why would I want to do dishes??”
Why would I want to do dishes? Why would I want to serve instead of pursue my own gain, especially when I know there could be suffering involved? Her answer to the question should have been, “because I want us to be partners, I don’t want to have to instruct you to do the right thing, I want your heart to be aligned with my heart and your will to be aligned with my will”. She didn’t say that, she said something about lemons and they broke up.
But that’s the tension here. Peter wants us to do these things not because we have to. Not because we’ve been given step by step instructions and we feel compelled to follow but because we love the same Jesus that he loves. Because the spirit that fills and transforms him also fills and transforms us. We read in the psalms:
Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will do it.
6 He will bring forth your righteousness like the dawn,
your justice like the noonday sun.
Our ability to do the action list, to love the flock, grows as we submit more to God, as we built humility and service into our live as habits, and as we cultivate faithfulness. As we delight in the lord our hearts desires change and we are serving not because we have to, but because we are part of the team, elders in the strange upside down family.
My magic green bucket So this brings us to the part of the show you’ve all been waiting for. This is my magic green bucket. It’s an actual bucket I’ve brought in from home. It does two things. Things one is collect my recycling and thing two is tell me how much my husband loves me. You see I’m very good at putting recycling in the bucket. I can stack and stuff and fill. I can even prop the bucket on the stand next to the microwave and stack things on the bench next to the bucket and then join the two piles into one huge recycling pile. The issue is that I am just not that good at taking the bucket to the recycling bin.
The recycling has to get to the bin, it is good for the recycling to not be in my house anymore. It also really annoys Murray when the recycling piles up. I know this because he’s told me and because he’s a sensible person who doesn’t want his kitchen to fill up with rubbish. But here’s the magic part, when I am not very good at emptying the recycling Murray does it. When I get distracted and don’t finish the job, when I pile things so high that I can’t move it all without something falling on me, when my best intentions haven’t been good enough and my actions still don’t live up to my expectations someone who is better at it than me steps in and helps. He demonstrates his love for me by being strong where I am weak, and he barely ever makes me feel bad about it. He doesn’t do it because he must, he could ask me, we’ve talked about the fact that I should do it more, that it’s not ok to pile up the trash, he does it because he wants to. Because we’re on the same team. Because he wants to serve the household more than he wants to “lord it over me”…most of the time!
Not because he must… But as always, the best example of this is Jesus. He served at calvery not because he had to, all power in heaven and earth was given to him. He worked miracles showing his power over the spiritual and natural worlds. He did not have to be on that cross.
…but because he wanted to. The whole way to Jerusalem Jesus spoke of his betrayal. He wept over it in the garden of Gethsemane. He knew the fullness of what was coming but instead of pursuing his own gain, he sheparded his flock. He made a way for the rubbish to get put in the bin even when we’ve piled it so high that we’ve buried ourselves. He wanted to do the dishes, even though they were really terrible dishes, because God’s will was more important. Because he had hope eternal.
And Peter draws us to that same hope, Shepard the flock, not because you must, but because you’re a willing part of the team, and “when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.”
We have this model and we have help in the spirit. We can’t change our hearts alone. We need to spend time listening, digging deeper, forming habits, practicing discipline, praying that we might know and delight in God’s will. So that we can participate as willing partners, excited to be working for the kingdom.
PRAYER
Hana continues our series in 1 John with the first condition for living as children of the light: Renounce Sin. The passage is 1 John 1:8-2:2, and speaks of how we must not, and can not, and do sin as Christians.
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8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
The opening sermon in our new series on the letter of 1st John. Mike introduces the series and shows how we can be sure as Christians that we have believed the right message and are able to confidently live in the truth of a genuine relationship with God.
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1 John 1:1-7 1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.