When Shepherds Aren't Shepherding Are They Still Shepherds?
Can it be?
Can it be that the typical church goer is still hanging on every word of their comedic “pastor” who has a perfect number of anecdotal points, alliterated lists, and acronym-driven series that all seem to unlock, overcome, get over, recover, conquer and rebound from anxiety and bad relationships?
Can it be that the number of controversies, scandals, bad doctrines, misspoken truths, and claims to personally received divine revelation, debunked prophecies, and partnerships with false leaders and religions cause no concern for the millions and millions of people who are glued to these personalities?
The Apostles can rightly say: “I told you so.”
When the Lord Jesus Christ questioned his disciples as to who they thought He was, Peter answered that He was “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16), to which Jesus enthusiastically commended Peter, pointing out the divine source of that understanding and belief: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (v. 17–18) (emphasis mine).
Later, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and Peter’s denial of Christ during that time, Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, to which Peter answered, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you” (Jn 21:15–17). This happened three times and after Peter answered each time, Jesus commanded him to feed and tend his sheep.
Right before the Lord’s ascension into Heaven, He commanded his disciples to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19–20) (emphasis mine).
Here’s the point: The teaching of the church is the feeding of the sheep. These roles are one and the same, in fact Jude 12 even says that the false teachers who do not teach sound doctrine—or any doctrine for that matter—are simply shepherds feeding themselves—a direct reference to Ezekiel 34.
Here’s a helpful tip. If you ever start to remind people of the subject matter of Ezekiel’s writing, you’re in deep, deep trouble.
Ezekiel stated: “The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?” (vv. 1–2).
He then states: “So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them” (vv. 5–6). If you read further in that text, Ezekiel ends up pronouncing severe judgement on these false shepherds of Israel for not protecting, tending to, and feeding the sheep.
They were false because they didn’t protect or feed.
Shepherds who don’t shepherd aren’t, in fact, shepherds. True shepherds actually do the job of shepherding, which requires active protection from wolves and gentle guidance into healthy and nourishing environments where food can be found.
When the Lord Jesus saw the crowds of people flocking to him, the Bible said “he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things” (Mk 6:34) (emphasis mine). How does Jesus flesh out His compassionate recognition of their need? He teaches them. He teaches them many things.
What are the “many things” that modern day shepherds ought to be teaching in their churches?
One can’t help but recall the Apostle Paul’s words, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” in Acts 20:27 as he was nearing the end of his ministry.
Paul, in writing to Timothy, stated explicitly that the charge he was entrusting to Timothy was the very charge that was entrusted to him by Christ (1 Tim 1:11, 18). His charge was to preach the gospel and all of the sound doctrine that goes with it, while commanding “certain persons not to teach any different doctrine nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith” (vv. 3–4).
He goes on to say that apart from doing this out of a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith, people simply wander into vain discussions about inane and impotent things (vv. 6–7) and in fact have blood on their hands from withholding the whole counsel of God’s Word (Acts 20:26).
It is not enough to self-attest to having a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith. If these qualities truly exist—as they will in a regenerated soul—then that pastor will feed their sheep the sound doctrine that is revealed in the entire Word of God.
To Titus, Paul says to “teach what accords with sound doctrine” (2:1). To Timothy again, he says, “I charge you . . . preach the word” (2 Tim 4:2). “For the time is coming,” Paul continues, “when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (vv. 3–4).
Paul also reiterates to the Ephesian church that the entire point of having gifted and called teachers in the church is to strengthen and deepen the faith of the church. Ultimately, it is “building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph 4:12–16) (emphasis mine).
In order to not do all that is listed above and yet maintain a convincing cover that in fact you are doing what is above, then you would have to be a really good communicator with really immature Christians in your church, even unsaved people in your church, who do not check whether or not what you are saying is actually true.
You would have to take Bible verses out of context and twist them to whatever topic you had in mind for the day. You would have to work the crowd with humor to gain their trust. You would have to use that ever-increasing, whiny voice of urgency in order to come across as passionate and knowledgeable about your subject. You would have to use language that was peppered with words like ‘grace’ and ‘Jesus’ so that people will think that everything else in the message must be a legitimate working out of the gospel.
This is exactly what the false teachers in the first century did. They didn’t roll into a mature church and start telling people that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah. No, they slid into churches with immature Christians and were themselves “hidden reefs,” as Jude says, that were ready to wreck the next gullible church-goer.
Jude said, “Certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (v. 4).
Peter warned that in his day people were already messing with Paul’s theology—as they continue to do today—saying that “the ignorant and unstable twist [his letters] to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Pet 3:16).
This cannot be stressed enough. God’s Word makes a consistently strong case that the shepherds who don’t teach the entire counsel of God are in fact false shepherds. This calls a frightening amount of modern teachers into question as to whether or not they are really called into the pastorate, or worse yet, whether or not they are even Christians.
Many people who have been keen enough to see the dangers in the seeker sensitive methodologies and emerging church gurus who have created personality branded empires have not taken their concern to the fullest extent in their minds that the Bible would have us take them.
Many Christians, for instance, are quick to denounce the health-wealth prosperity “gospel” of personalities like Joel Osteen, but they don’t realize that the biggest names in evangelicalism essentially teach the very same material that he does.
Can it be?
Can it be that in our self-righteous environment, we have labeled Osteen as a false teacher while fully embracing half a dozen younger versions?
Can it be that we are convinced that all men who have a gift for public speaking and can comment on some aspect of general truth have met all of the qualifications for filling the office of elder and pastor?
Can it be that we have replaced hamartiology (study of sin) with humor; soteriology (study of salvation) with story; ecclesiology (study of the church) with executive strategies; theology (study of God) with theory; sanctification with self-help?
The painful truth is that the Christocentric nature of the true church of God has been hijacked by man-centric personalities who sell all kinds of bootstraps for the desperate. They make things up as they go, thus purposely avoiding some parts of the Bible, or twisting other parts to mean what they want it to mean.
There are, suffice it to say, some teachers today that the church needs to be warned of, and thus avoid, who have consistently shown their utter disregard for the Word of God as well as their condemnatory practices of twisting the text of Scripture.
There are a number of men that I have selected to examine in brief, namely Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, Bill Hybels, and Carl Lentz to name a few key players. They have massive followings and most of them have in one way or another been the point men for whole movements within the vague evangelical landscape.
We need to judge with right judgement and not just by appearances as the Lord Jesus Christ explicitly stated in John 7:24.
We need to be Bereans who used Scripture to verify even the Apostle Paul’s teaching in Acts 17.
We need to test the spirits as the Apostle John commanded us in 1 John 4.
We need to be aware of the warning signs of false teachers as the Apostle Peter pointed out to us in 2 Peter 2.
We need to contend for the true faith that was delivered once and for all, not allowing room for false doctrine like Jude commanded us.
Nearly the entire New Testament was written as a means to flesh out the apostles’ commission by the Lord Jesus Christ to teach us all that He had commanded them. Most of the writing is instigated by false teachers who peddled the Word with false doctrine, or purposely taught no doctrine, as opposed to accurately teaching sound doctrine.
Stay tuned as we look at the written Word of God and consider its standard for preachers and teachers in every age.
“I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert . . .” | Acts 20:26–31 (emphasis mine)
In Christ Alone,
Ben
