This is an ordination sermon preached 11/21/2010. May the Lord use it and bless it.
The sermon audio can be heard here: Seek Faithful People
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen. Psa 19:14 NASB
Seek Faithful People
2 Timothy 2: 2 – The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. NASB
Peter, I want to focus on one element of this verse as it will relate to your future ministry. I will reduce it to one simple concept that you as a Pastor must remember – Seek Faithful People!
Who are these “faithful people” you are to seek?
The word faithful means in a practical sense, someone who won’t cheat you in a business transaction, someone who upholds their end of the bargain, one who executes a command that’s been given to them, a person who does their duty as they say they will.
Psalm 15:4 expands on the concept when we read “Who may remain in the Lord’s presence?…” A number of answers are given but one stands out… “Who may remain in the Lord’s presence? …The one who swears to his own hurt but does not change.”
This person swears and oath, but when circumstances change and the individual might be tempted to renege on his part of the agreement or not keep the covenant because it is no longer advantageous, this person does not change. This person remains faithful… he has “sworn to his own hurt”. They do not deviate from their promise because they fear the Lord.
We see an example the fear of God at work prompting faithfulness in Ruth:
But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. “Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.” Rth 1:16-17 NASB
But this is the kind of faithful person you are to seek in order to pass on the Gospel from one generation to the next.
If you marry, the first faithful person you should seek is a spouse who is faithful.
+Is the one you plan to marry faithful to you personally? And more importantly will she be faithful to the Lord whether you are in the picture or not?
+Will the one you love receive your teaching and seek to live it out?
+Will she be one who is not only faithful to her wedding vows but also faithful to the Lord through difficult times? It is impossible to know until the hour of testing, but it is important to see if there is a pattern of faithfulness that displays her trust in the Lord before you marry.
As your spouse, she may enjoy the blessings that cross your path but she will also suffer the problems you encounter… she will need to have a deep faithfulness to Christ.
With regard to others, your calling as a pastor is to serve all who cross your path seeking ministry without casting your pearls before swine (Mt 7:6).
You do not know when the Word of Christ may work and produce a faithful person, so whenever the return, offer God’s Word, the seed of the Gospel.
But INVEST yourself in those who are showing themselves faithful to you and to Jesus Christ.
What should you look for?
- Do they show up for more than just the Lord’s Day?
- Do they hunger and thirst for righteousness?
- Do they want to learn from you?
- Do they follow through on their promises?
- Will they go with you as you serve to help as they learn by “doing”?
- Will they serve others?
- Will they persevere in hard times and “pay the price” of following Christ?
What is our calling toward such faithful people?
+ Not to reproduce our oddities or our sins in them.
There are too many people, organizations, and denominations known more for their gracelessness, meanness, and penchant for controversy than for the Gospel of Christ.
+ To preoccupy them with Jesus Christ so they may entrust themselves fully to Him!
Col 1:28 NASB “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.”
We have a two fold ministry of warning and urging to forsake what it wrong or detrimental (to put off the “old self”) and also of instructing the faithful in how to “put on Christ”. Whether we urge against the wrong or instruct in what is right, our two-fold goal is that those we serve may be “Complete in Christ”.
This completion we aim for is not a DEPENDENCE upon US, but MATURITY which means the person has been set free by the power of God to live without improper reliance on others but in full reliance upon God.
Too many ministries seek to produce clones. Let those we serve love the Christ our Scriptures and Confessions teach and resemble Him.
+ Teach them to live out the Baptismal Covenant.
Encourage them to live daily in the promises God gave them in Holy Baptism… to be their God and Father. To cleanse them daily through the blood of Christ. To renew them daily by the Holy Spirit until that day when they are presented without blemish among God’s Elect on the Last Day.
Teach them that God’s gracious promise calls for our response to God’s grace. And when we fail, God’s gracious promise calls us to lean again upon that grace and return to the Father.
+ Do not kill faith by a love for quarrels and a love for speculation.
Those you serve likely have life hard enough without engaging them in endless battles over things that in the end have little profit to them. They will have enough battles to face against the world, the flesh, and the devil without your finding more battles for them to join.
Lead your people to focus on Christ. Leave it to the armchair theologians who delight in endless charts, who have God’s decrees all figured out, and who never think themselves wrong to kill the faith of others… do not join them. And deliver those you can from them.
+ Look for the Broken.
Look for those who know they have been found by Christ the Good Shepherd and who have been rescued from their lostness but who hear His voice now and want to find their way back to the Father.
Prefer the broken to the proud – Prefer those who know themselves to be in need of a Savior to those who seem to need no saving because they think themselves insulated from suffering due to their own money, skills, or supposed moral stability.
+ Pray and Persevere.
Pray for God to send you such people. Our Lord spent time with 12 and in particular with three. Pray the Lord will give you your Twelve. When He gives them, pray for them.
Many discouragements may beset you, so plan now to PERSEVERE in seeking out the faithful ones. As the old saying goes, you’ll have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the princes you seek.
When all else fails and it seems those you have invested your time with have left you, keep praying and seeking for those whom God will send you.
Some will come for a time, be blessed and then leave mysteriously. Trust that you have done your job in the time God has given you. But keep investing in people while God gives you time.
Your heart will be broken in this process, but God is faithful and may He be pleased to guard His Gospel and use your labors to bear holy seed 30, 60, and 100 fold in the faithful He sends.
+ Never teach Doctrine in the ABSTRACT, but always as something to be APPLIED to daily life.
It’s not cussing in this context to day: DO SOMETHING FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!
Do Something – take your people with YOU, train them, and then have them take other people with THEM.
Remember the will of the Father is not to multiply words without holy devotion and service.
Jas 1:27 NASB Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
We confuse multiplying theological arguments with remaining unstained from the world and living faithfully.
God, through James, bids us enter the suffering of others and the dirt of a world where the helpless suffer and – without ourselves entering into any moral filth we may encounter in our sinful world – come to the aid of those like the widow and the orphan who are about to be swallowed up by despair. Relieve them. Aid them in Christ’s Name. Bring them spiritual and material reason to trust in the Living God who (Psa 68:6 NASB) “makes a home for the lonely…[and who] He leads out the prisoners into prosperity”.
Never separate material relief from spiritual relief. Indeed you and those God gives you to instruct are both together (1Pe 2:9 NASB) made part of His “CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;”
Proclaim His excellencies in Word and Deed as God gives you opportunity. Never fall into the trap of living out only a “Social Gospel” but never forget that in the Gospel we proclaim the Good News that God will wipe away every tear (Rev. 7:17) from the eyes of His people. That glorious day is anticipated whenever you in your ministry of service in this life may wipe away a tear in Christ’s Name through the good you do.
+ Display Your Reliance On The Savior.
Too frequently we call men to trust in Christ and then act ourselves as if we have it “all together”. This proclaims a false Gospel – a Gospel that implies there is a day in this life when we find our comfort in our own strength instead in Him who died for us.
To avoid such a prideful misrepresentation of the Gospel with those you seek to bring to maturity in Christ, remember and practice the counsel of Jas 5:16 NASB : “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”
Repent and pray with those you seek to lead. Some will despise you for this because of their pride. Those who know themselves to have been lost and found by Christ will see God at work in this. You serve to encourage them, not the prideful who will be damned by their own presumption.
With these words dear Peter, I encourage you to “Seek the Faithful” and may God bless you as you do so!
Benediction: Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Heb 13:20-21 NASB
