Well, I invite you this morning, dear congregation, to turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter 5. And this morning in your hearing, I will be reading verses 1-5. 1 Peter 5, verses 1-5. If you're following along in a pew Bible, you can find that on page 1016. Let us give our attention therefore to the reading of God's Word. 1 Peter 5, verses 1-5. The Apostle Peter says, so I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. As far as the reading of God's Word, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the Word of our Lord stands forever. And we are thankful for it. Let's ask the Lord one last time for illumination as we come before the ministry of the Word. Let's pray. Father God, I pray that You would give us clarity of eyes and heart and mind and soul to see Your Son, Jesus Christ, who has conquered the world through humility. We read in Psalm 2 that the kings are to give attention and be fearful and be aware of this son, that they are to kiss him lest he be angry because he is a conquering son, he is a conquering king and yet this conquering king was first a conquering servant through humility. A humility, Father, that took Him from Your right hand in heaven all the way down to the bloody and gory death of a cross. And Father, the cross is the glory of our blessed Christian faith. The cross is the pinnacle, the cross is the center, the cross, Father, is the baseline of all that we are in Jesus Christ. And so I pray this morning that humility would be appealing to us as a people. I pray that humility would trump itself over pride. both on behalf of the congregation, on behalf of her leaders, that we as a people, Father, would emulate our Lord Jesus Christ as humble servants of His. Give grace, Father, to all of us as we listen to Your Word. Give help to Your servant this morning, and may Your Son be put on display, and that He be magnified for all that He is, for it is in His name we pray, Amen. So, in the ministry of the Word this morning, we are coming to our final section of 1 Peter 5, 1-5. I see that there are some visitors here among us, and we have been working through the book of 1 Peter for some time now, and we've been in 1 Peter 5 for probably two or three months. I've spent about six or seven weeks just on this section, and this is the final sermon in that section. And why? Well, the reason is because this section deals with the responsibilities of elders or pastors or shepherds to the congregation, and the responsibility and roles of the congregation to her shepherds. And this is critically important. It's something, if you will, of a job description within the church. And as I've spoken in weeks past of the various abuses that can ensue, abuses on the one hand of the congregation toward leadership, or abuses on the other hand of leadership toward congregation, I firmly believe, and I hope that you would join me in this conviction, that if there's any way that we can eliminate even the scent of congregational rebellion, or even the scent of overbearing, overpowering, domineering leadership, it is if and when we are able, through the help of the Spirit, to steel ourselves to follow the order and design of how the church is meant to be run by the Word of God. The Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. And here, the Apostle Peter, not only an apostle, but also a pastor himself, is giving, as it were, roles and responsibilities for congregation and leadership. in the last three times that we have been dealing with 1 Peter chapter 5, that the principal role of the congregation is to submit to the leadership. And you see that in verse 5, likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders. And we saw some weeks back that Peter primarily has in mind literally those who are younger in the congregation. Why? because I don't care what generation you're in, there tends to be a characteristic within younger generations to think that they've got it figured out, that they don't need wisdom, that they know better than their previous generations, and so it was in Asia Minor in the first century. And so Peter is lovingly and pastorally exhorting his congregation, those who are young in the congregation, to submit to the office bearers in the church, that is the elders. But then secondly, he's also saying to all the congregation, this is something that we are called to do. Now, this is a God-given authority that God has given to the elders. You'll recall, and I've brought this up numerous times in Ephesians 4, that the ascended Christ gave gifts to the church, and those gifts were evangelists, pastors, teachers, prophets, and the purpose of those gifts was to build up the body of Christ. to make her able to stand in a context where false doctrine and false teaching is like a wave and a wind blowing or seeking to blow the church to and fro. And so the Lord, the ascended Lord, gives the gift of pastors and elders and teachers to keep the church's feet firmly seated on solid ground. And so this is a real authority and yet we do recognize that there are abuses of authority and so some weeks back I sought to point out three things that submission does not mean. I'm just going to tick them off this morning. Submission to your elders does not mean that you give the elders absolute authority over your consciences and wills. There is only one person to whom you give absolute authority over your wills and that is God himself. And the elders are there to carry out God's will in your life, so to the degree that the elders are calling you to do that which is pleasing to the Lord, yes, you submit to them. But in other areas not mentioned in Scripture, you are not bound to their counsel. Secondly, submission to elders does not mean that you regard your elders as infallible in their interpretation and application of Scripture. We recognize that the Word of God is inspired and infallible in every jot and tittle. We recognize that if there is an infallible interpreter, it is the Spirit of God. And yes, the Lord has given gifts to His church to interpret the Bible, but none of us as officers in the Church are infallible in our interpretation of the Bible. And yet, we mention under this head that the congregation should nonetheless give pride of place to the expertise that the ministers have in unpacking the Word of God, and if you can't give that pride of place to your minister, you should find a church where you can, because you need to be under ministers whom you believe to be competent in the Word of God. And then finally, submission to your elders does not mean that members must agree with their elders in matters of judgment and wisdom which are not explicitly addressed in Scripture. And again, this dovetails with the first point. Elders give a whole plethora of different wisdom, but some of that wisdom is just cobbled together from life experience. And there isn't necessarily a book, chapter, and verse in the Bible that says, you shall do thus in this situation. So while they can give advice and counsel, elders need to be very careful about what they put as binding on the consciences of their people. So what is the main idea then of what Peter is getting at? To be submissive to elders means that as members of your church, you conscientiously embrace, from the heart, every aspect of their Bible-based efforts to oversee and shepherd you as part of God's flock entrusted to them. So as I said some weeks back, how can we get at what submission does mean? Well, we can do that by just looking at 1 Peter 5, 1 through 5, and teasing out, if you will, the various roles of the elder. He is a teacher, he is a shepherd, he is an overseer, he is all those things. And as you think about what those various roles do on the ground, in the context of the church, then you can go on the other end of that, that is the receiving end, the congregational end, and say, If a shepherd is to be an overseer, for example, then what does it mean that the congregation is to do in the context where those shepherds are seeking to oversee? So, last time we said, positively, that submission means that it is the congregation's duty and privilege to be present when their shepherds feed them with the Word of God. In other words, if one of the chief roles, and that's what Peter gets at here, is that the shepherds are to shepherd the flock of God. What do shepherds do, boys and girls? They feed their sheep, right? They want their sheep to be nice and fat for various reasons, right? And so they feed them, they bring them along still waters to drink. And so if a sheep is following their shepherd, they are going to eat when the shepherd brings them into the field. They are going to drink when the shepherd brings them along still waters. And so we see the analogy, do we not? When shepherds, that is pastors in the context of the church, bring the Word of God, which is the food for the people of God, to the consciences of their people, the people must be present so that they can feed upon the Word of God. And we said some weeks back that worship, what we're doing this morning, what we will do tonight on the Lord's Day, For 2,000 years, what the people of God have been doing, on the first day of the week, when the Lord resurrected over death, hell, and the grave, this is the market day of the soul. This is where we feed our souls with the sacraments, with the Word, and with prayer. And the Lord has made, as it were, the Lord's Day as a bullseye. It is His bullseye for sanctifying and justifying you and getting you to the point of glorification. And so it is incumbent upon us as Christians to put ourselves right directly in that bullseye so the Lord can minister to our souls through word and sacrament and prayer. Worship, you see, is not simply passive. We just come and we receive. It is that. It is very much that. But worship, you see, is also what? It is active. We are actively engaging even right now as the Word of God is being preached. How are you actively engaging? Well, hopefully, you are letting the Word of God serve as a searchlight of interrogation into your heart and your soul, and you're asking yourself the question of application. Do I see the Lord's Day as the bullseye of God's sanctifying and justifying work? Is that how I treat it? Is it the center of gravity of my life? Is this what I'm teaching my children? You're asking yourselves those questions because worship is active. As we sang this morning, I hope that your soul was soaring in worship to God as we sung these beautiful words of Christ justifying work. But you know what? Even after the benediction is given, your work keeps going, right? I think of that text in Hebrews 10, 24, 25. Let us consider how we may stir one another on to love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another all the more as we see the day approaching. Long after that benediction falls upon your heads, you are going to your brothers and you are going to your sisters, and what are you doing? You're encouraging them. You see, we have the role of elder in the church, we have the role of deacon in the church, but do you understand that the role of member is also a role? A role with responsibilities. Worship on Sunday morning and Sunday evening is not simply passive, it is active, and we as children of God in the household of God have a responsibility, a blessed responsibility to encourage one another, sharpen one another, speak into one another's lives, and the primary target where we do that is the Lord's Day. So now, let me give you three more things this morning that submission does mean. So we already looked at when the shepherd is feeding you with the Word of God, you should be there. But now secondly, submission means that the congregation heeds the biblically-based warnings of their shepherds. I want you to notice in verse 2 of 1 Peter 5, He says, "...shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight." Now, that word oversight is a noun in the Greek text, but there is a verb form of that noun in the Greek text, and it's the verbal form from which we get this concept of bishop. To be bishopine is to be overseeing. And one of the things that pastors do in the local church is they oversee and they guard and they protect. Now they do that spiritually. That is the principal way in which they do that. But as we've been talking about even in our last business meeting, we're also responsible to protect you physically. When you're here on the Lord's Day, we need to be mindful of, especially in the country right now, all the shootings that are going on in houses of worship. We are called to protect you, and that's why one of the things that the deacons and elders are working through is a security plan to keep us safe in the event of something like an active shooter. But coming back to the spiritual side of the ledger, I want you to think again of the analogy of a shepherd. Think of David, boys and girls. What did he do? He guarded the flock of lambs and sheep from lions and bears. And it is the duty of shepherds to guard the sheep from anything that would harm them, and if that's the case, then coming back to the receiving end of that role and responsibility, the congregation is to heed the warnings of their shepherds when they give them. You know, in the ministry, warnings make up a large part, the warp and the woof of what we do as ministers. We are constantly warning against false teaching. We are constantly warning against false thinking. Because actions and thoughts and the trajectory of your life, you know where it starts? It starts in your mind and it starts in your heart. And if your thinking is off, then your actions and your words are going to follow that off thinking. And so one of the things that shepherds do is they seek to situate your thinking and your worshiping of God and your glorifying of God and all that you do in the Scriptures. Another thing that shepherds do in guarding and protecting you is we warn you against competing loves. We warn you against competing loves. The shepherds are to guard the sheep from these competing loves that the world is going to offer in the place of what? In the place of Jesus Christ. They are like siren songs that are calling you to the shores of destruction. In each and every one of our lives, we have special Idols. We have special competing loves. We have things that we are drawn to. They may not be that which our neighbor's hearts are drawn to, but they are things to which we are drawn to. And you know what shepherds need to do as good and faithful shepherds? They need to know you well enough to know what is drawing you away from Jesus. and they need to be on their knees in prayer to the Lord as a good prayer warrior, praying that the Lord would woo you to Himself and make those competing loves and the voices of those loves drowned out by the glory and the majesty and the pleasure that comes in finding your satisfaction in Jesus Christ. That's what shepherds do. And they do all of that with warnings. You know, the pastoral warnings that the pastors here at Grace Covenant Church seek to give you are not a result of our own peculiar generation and customs. That can happen sometimes. No. If it is the person of Christ that calls us into obedience, and if it is the love of Christ that constrains us, then listen, it is the warnings of the Word of God that form the fences on the pathway that leads to Christ that keep us from falling into ditches on the left and on the right. Speaking of the precepts of the law, the psalmist says in Psalm 19.11, I love this, "'Moreover, by them,' that is, the law, "'is your servant warned, and keeping them is great delight.' So congregation, if the role of your pastor is to be a guardian, a protector, do not be wary of being warned. And one of the themes that is constantly running throughout this text, and also we've worked it into the liturgy this morning, is that what is going to keep us from being wary of warnings that come from our shepherds? By killing pride and embracing and magnifying what? Humility. by killing pride and magnifying and embracing humility. Humility is the perspective and the trajectory and the disposition of your soul that says, I don't have it all figured out. There is room for me to grow in wisdom. There is room for me to grow in knowledge. There is room for an older man or even an older woman whether you're a man or a woman, to come to me and say, hey, can I give you some thoughts on an area in your life? Yes, give it to me, because wisdom is that blessed treasure that the Proverbs say, the first thing about wisdom, get it and treasure it. And so in your pursuit of sanctification, do you get wisdom? Do you seek it? Do you grasp it? Do you treasure it? One of the greatest indications is how you respond to criticism. how you respond to being warned. If every time a shepherd comes to you with a warning, a concern, a red flag, you get defensive, it may be that you do not love wisdom as much as you think you do. But humility embraces and loves wisdom. Humility is able to say, I've got egg on my face. Humility is willing and able to say, I didn't do it perfectly, and guess what, that's okay, because I'm a sinner and I believe in total depravity. And it's okay because I believe in the gospel, and despite the egg on my face, and the fact that I didn't do things perfectly, and the fact that I'm not a wonderful husband, and the fact that I'm not an amazing father, Jesus still died for me. It is out of the glories of justification that humility is harnessed and grown and cultivated. And so we constantly go back to our standing in Christ. You know, over my many years, not only in ministry, but also just as a Christian, I have warned men, and even in some cases women, not to pursue an unbelieving spouse, and maybe some of you have done that as well. This is one of the things I've seen. Here's one of those competing loves that we're talking about, right? You've got a young man, a young woman who's a Christian, and they're single, and they want a lifelong partner, and that's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing to desire, it's a wonderful thing to have, but they feel like their only options are unbelievers for whatever reason. And so they start to gravitate toward that unbelieving spouse and pastors and Christians come alongside them and say, brother, sister, you don't realize what you're doing. First off, Paul tells us not to do that. But secondly, just practically, I have seen time and time again, men and women who have bucked off the wisdom of the church, bucked off the wisdom of pastors and said, I'm just going to do it anyways. It's a missionary dating type scenario. Maybe he or she will come to think, maybe they will. But what about the damage control that's going to ensue in the meantime? I have seen men and women marry unbelieving spouses, and a few different things happen. Either A, as much as they try to win that spouse over, the spouse wants nothing to do with it whatsoever, and because of that man's love for his wife, he goes in her direction rather than in the direction of Christ. and he ends up falling away from Jesus. Or, he clings tenaciously to Jesus, which is something that he wants to do, but because there's not harmony in this home, it causes dissension in the marriage, and sometimes it ends up in divorce. Young people, listen. This is very important. One of the competing loves that will come for you is the spouse that you choose. And when pastors come alongside you, whether it is solicited or unsolicited, because we tend to do that, okay? Listen to the counsel of your elders. They are protectors of your soul. And you know, I've seen the same thing with substance abuse. I've seen this in the counseling office. I've seen this just in day-to-day discipling relationships. I've seen it as a pastor. Men and women who either have a background in substance abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and then they get a little ray of victory and it's wonderful. And then they think, I can just go back to it and I can be measured. And we say, brother, sister, listen. You know, I don't wanna speak where scripture hasn't spoken. You certainly have a right to have an adult beverage from time to time, but given your background, given your tendencies and your proclivities, do you think it's the better part of wisdom to start introducing that at this point? No, we don't think it's wise. Listen to wisdom, heed wisdom, and they don't, and what happens? They fall right back in to the gutter of drug abuse and addiction. Warnings are part of the warp and woof of ministry. And if you don't want warnings, if you don't want shepherds being protectors and overseers of your soul, this is not the church for you. Because despite the sometimes abuse that shepherds might get for trying to shepherd and trying to lead people in the right direction, we're just going to keep doing it. Okay? If we got scratch marks on our face spiritually, or somebody punches us in our face spiritually, that's fine. We're gonna keep coming for you. You wanna know why? This is what we've been called to. And we love and honor Christ so much that we want to see you in Christ, and we want you to make it to judgment. They want you to be preserved by God's redeeming grace. And the means to that end is oftentimes warnings. Are warnings antithetical to gospel proclamation? You say, what do you mean by that? Are warnings in the context of Christian ministry not part of the cloth of declaring to you that you are forgiven in Christ? No, they complement them. Look at Colossians 1.28. You don't need to turn there, I'll just read it to you. Here's Paul. The Apostle with a heart set on fire for Gospel proclamation and seeing the Gospel worked out in the life of his people. And here's what he says in Colossians 1.28. Him, Christ, we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ. Here you have Him giving the Gospel, you are saved, you are secure, you are resting in Jesus Christ, and yet, the warnings, keep resting in Christ, keep pursuing Christ, keep loving Christ more than all these other competing loves in your life. Is Gospel proclamation antithetical to warnings? Absolutely not. Gospel proclamation includes warnings. Warnings are the means by which the Lord preserves you in the faith. And if you can work that into your systematic theology and your understanding of church, you will be a better Christian for it, and you will be able to cultivate a humility in the context of this church that will gratefully accept wisdom and instruction when it comes your way. So don't get irritated. When shepherds see certain facets of your life that display danger and warn you against it, but receive it as a gracious means to keep you in the way, a well-timed warning is like a shepherd's crook. The crook was not to club the predatory animal, but to put around the neck of the sheep and bring it back. So be thankful that someone cares enough to put the crook around your neck. But then now, secondly, in our outline this morning, submission means that the congregation doesn't run and hide when the shepherd comes to heal or restore them with the Word of God. One of the things that pastors do is they heal and restore strained sheep, and sometimes that literally means a foot race. You think I'm joking, but I could tell you stories of how I have or other pastors have literally had to run after brothers or sisters who didn't want the accountability. And you say, isn't that taking it a little far? I mean, you're not a track coach, you're a pastor. Yes, and we oversee souls, and souls are embodying bodies, and bodies have feet and they run. And when the shepherd comes with the medicine, you're not to run and hide. False shepherds, Ezekiel 34, they're the ones that refuse to heal. They're the ones that refuse to restore. They're the ones, listen boys and girls, that refuse to seek out the strained sheep. You got a sheep that's strained, maybe you're in damage control, or maybe as a pastor, because you have insight to that sheep, you know, woo, they're starting to slip. You know, one of the things we notice quite often with people who are starting to stray off into the field of competing loves, is we just don't see them. They just don't come to Lord's Day gatherings. And then we text them and we call them and they ghost us. I just learned that term. Apparently that means when somebody texts you and you don't answer them, that's called ghosting. Some of you are really good at that. But anyways, they start ghosting you. And when we sit in elder meetings, we talk about that and we banteed around and somebody wisely pipes up and says, there's some red flags there. We need to go after them. I don't think that they've been kidnapped or abducted by aliens. I think that sin has abducted them and we need to go after them. But it's the false shepherds that said, well, we don't want to. First off, it's a lot of work to do that. It's a lot of emotional energy. It is, trust me. Trust me, I know. Pastor Ken and Pastor Jim and I, we carry these burdens on our hearts weekly and we do it willingly or else we would not be in the place where we are. But you know what? When a sheep has an intestinal parasite and the shepherd comes with some elixir, The sheep don't spit it out. They may want to spit it out because it tastes like castor oil or something like that. But when the shepherd comes to run his hand through the fleece of the sheep, because sometimes what does sheep have? They have burrs in their fleece. Or maybe they've got a tick in their fleece, boys and girls. How's the shepherd going to find that? What's he got to do? He's got to run his hands through the fleece of the sheep. And in the context of the church, sometimes we've got to do something equivalent to that. Something that causes us to get down into the weeds of your life and say, brother, sister, what's going on? Sometimes that means we have to ask you very direct questions. And by the way, they're questions that we're uncomfortable with them too. If you're awkward, we're doubly awkward, okay? Because we realize, like, this isn't fun, okay? I'd rather be, you know, sitting around a fellowship table eating some tasty morsel of food and having fun and talking about, you know, sports or something, but sometimes we've got to run our fingers in the fleece of the sheep. And what we shouldn't say is, get your hands off of me, shepherd abuse, shepherd abuse. I thank God for a shepherd who puts his hand in my fleece when I have ticks and burrs that need to be taken out. They're not going to be taken out by the shepherd standing 50 yards away from the sheep saying, come here sheepy sheepy, you got a little ticky and maybe I could get it out with this pull. No, no, he's got to get in there and he's got to get his hands in there. And so shepherds have to get their hands in the fleece of the sheep as well. And guess what? Faithful are the wounds of a what? A friend. But profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Everything's alright, brother and sister. Everything's great. We'll just go on super fit. We're not interested in that. And I think that many of you are here because you see that we're not interested in that. You know what, so many of you in this congregation, you see what the shepherds are trying to accomplish here. And I've said in the last few weeks that we have been so encouraged by emails and text messages that many of you have sent that see that we're trying to shepherd you, we're trying to love you, and we don't do it perfectly. And we pray to the Lord and ask of you that in the same way that we try to be patient and gracious and merciful with you when you're straying, that you would be patient and gracious and merciful with us when we don't shepherd as perfectly as we should. You know, can I just give you an anecdotal story? I mean, I want you to put yourself in my shoes for a moment. And don't answer this out loud, answer it in your mind, okay? But if you don't come to church two weeks in a row, Do you want a pastor calling you? Because we deal with that sometimes in elders meetings. There's one class of people that are like, just leave me alone. Assume that everything's right and don't bother me. Because if you call me, it makes me think that you're an attendance Nazi. And I just don't want to deal with that. And I don't want to feel bad. And then there's other people that are like, yeah, if a pastor doesn't call me, if I've been gone for two weeks, he must not care about me. So what we have to do is we have to enter into this chemical laboratory of not knowing which category you fall in. And sometimes we think, well, I think everything's okay. They haven't been here for two weeks. Maybe a pipe broke in their basement. I don't know. They're trying to swim their way out. I don't know. Let's not call them. And then they come the third week and they're like, do you guys hate me? Like nobody called me at all. Not a pastor, not a church member. Nope. I'm sorry. We messed up. We don't know what category you're in, okay? But I'll just tell you we're going to default on this side. We're going to default that you want to be cared about because most human beings work that way, right? You want to be loved. You want to be appreciated. You want to be recognized. As they say, do you see me? Do you hear me? We want you to see that we see you and we hear you and we don't see you and we don't hear you when we're not here so we're going to reach out to you. So, it's a dangerous thing to confront somebody who's intoxicated and infatuated with their sin. And sometimes it gets ugly. Sometimes people get angry and their sin has so twisted their thinking that they actually think that their shepherds are the bad guys. But the faithful shepherd won't let that deter him from stepping into the fray and doing battle for their souls. We do that on our knees and we do that in the pulpit. Now, thirdly, what does submission mean? Submission means that the congregation follows the example of their shepherds insofar as their shepherds are imitating Christ. Peter tells us in verse 3 in your text, he says that shepherds are to be examples to the flock. And the author to the Hebrews brings this out more emphatically in Hebrews 13, verse 7. He says, Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. And then he says, Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Isn't that interesting? There seems to be this expectation across the board in the New Testament that if a leader is a leader, it's because he, or in some cases she, is worthy to be imitated. They are examples to be followed. And Paul said this, right? Imitate me as I imitate Christ. Paul could say that, and we should as a church be able to say that as well. And that's why we seek to put men in the office of elder and deacon in this congregation who are worthy of imitation. We don't want to put leaders in there who are almost leaders. We don't want to put leaders in there who are casual Christians or mediocre Christians. We want to put men in those positions who, for example, see our membership covenant and they say, I'm all about it. This is what I'm committed to. This is what I teach my family. This is what I'm about. I am a church man. I am a church woman. I love the church. The church is the center of gravity. Why? Because the church is the bride of Christ. And I love the church with all my heart. If the doors are open, I'm there. If there's a prayer request that needs to be prayed for, I'm there. I'm here for them. That's a leader. That's a leader. And those are the leaders that we're looking for in this congregation to put into the office of elder and to put into the office of deacon. And you know, Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 5.22 to have this kind of approach. He says, "...do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sin of others, but keep yourself pure." In other words, what is he saying? Don't lay your hands on a man, either an elder or a deacon, too quickly or take part in the sin of others. What he's saying is once you lay hands on that man, especially in the context of this church, that's your elder and that's your deacon until he dies, moves away or sins and he gets disqualified or he has to step down for a time. That's your elder. We don't have term limits here. So it's much easier to put a man into the office than it is to what? Get him out. And so we want to be extra careful in this congregation that any man that we're putting before you is a man worthy of imitation. We're not saying that these men are sinless, far from it, but we are saying we see in these men a prevailing disposition of faithfulness in their life, which is to be imitated by others. But now finally, this morning, Peter tells us in 1 Peter 5, 5b, he says, "...clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another." Why? Because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. What a beautiful thing it is to be humble. And if there is one overarching enemy lurking in the ranks of every one of our hearts that will breed, either on the one hand, abusive shepherds, or on the other hand, rebellious congregations, if there's one enemy that will do that, what is it? It is pride. The ugly sin of pride. The minister who would promote his own agenda before the congregation, That kind of pride will ruin the congregation. It's out of that pride that will ruin the sweet harmony and unity between shepherd and sheep. The member, likewise, who is bent on fulfilling and carrying out his or her selfish agenda, they're going to destroy the unity and the harmony in the context of the church. What all of us need, whether we are members, elders, deacons, whatever we do in the church, is we need an air of humility. This is why God tells us to clothe ourselves with humility. God opposes the proud, but to the humble, what does He give? He gives grace. Where do we find grace? We find grace through the means of grace. Word, sacrament, and prayer. Because in those means, we see Christ. Christ is the center of Word. Christ is the center of sacrament. Christ is the center of prayer. Christ communicates His humble disposition to us through the Word. He reminds us, listen, of His humble sacrifice through the sacraments. So we get grace through the Word. We get grace that reminds us of humility through the sacraments, and then what about prayer? He reminds us that He intercedes for us through prayer. We who are bent on pride, we who are thirsty for pride, He comes and He assuages our guilt, and He intercedes for us on behalf of the Father. You see, Christ is the center of the means of grace. And so where do we need to go to run away from that monster lurking in the recesses of our hearts called pride? We need to run to grace, and grace has an address. Right here for us is 2236 Salem Road, where we see grace administered through words, sacrament, and prayer. You want to humble yourself in the sight of the Lord so that He can lift you up. You come to the foot of the cross at the means of grace, and there we will see Christ shining through. And so we come to Him weekly. seeking a Savior whose humility crushed death, hell, and the grave for us. So this morning, let us all, whether we are elders, deacons, or members, come to this meek and mild Savior today by turning from our sins and calling out to Him in faith. And if you are an unbeliever this morning, you, by doing that, by repenting of your sins and calling upon the Lord Jesus Christ, will be transferred from a state of wrath to a state of grace. Come this morning through the call of the Gospel to Jesus Christ, and your sins will be forgiven. Let's pray. Father God, we thank You for the humility of Your Son. A humility, quite frankly, Father, that all of us have fallen far short of this week in exemplifying. Myself included, Father. But Father, we thank You for the Gospel. We thank You for the despite the fact that as we've wrestled with that monster of pride lurking in our hearts this week, that it has overtaken us, full Nelson and all, overtaken us. Yet we could come to this never ceasing flow of redeeming grace and mercy that forgives us, puts us into Christ once again. And we're reminded that the hand of your Father has kept us there from eternity past. And Father, I pray that out of that position of justification, out of that position of sustaining grace, you would cultivate within us, blowing upon us as it were onto the embers that are barely glowing. such humility and grace that will cause a fire and a flame of zeal to well up within us, so that we might serve You with the same humility that Your Son served us with in the cross. Help us, Father, for we need it. We ask these things in Your Son's name. Amen.