August 27 Sermon: Well Ordered

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that Jesus is the head of his church. He is our ascended Lord. He is our ascended King. We know that through his word and through the Spirit, he not only calls his people to himself, but he gathers his people to himself. In the kingdom of God, there is every nationality, every ethnicity, and every language. The people of God were once not a people, but we know that now we are God's people. The word church in the New Testament is the Greek word ecclesia. This word means literally called out ones, people called out from the peoples of the earth to be the people of God. A people not united by skin color or language or ethnicity or any worldly marker, but united in the truth that because we have been united to Christ, we are united to one another. We are God's people. It's a beautiful truth that Jesus is the head of his body, the church. But how does all that work? Despite our being a forgiven people of God, no matter how much we strive for holiness and to follow God's commands, there's going to be issues in the church because human people are involved, right?

 Now, in our time, I think we have a propensity to have a negative view of the word government. Regardless of your political views at some point in your life, you haven't liked something that the government has done. Modern folks generally hear the word government, and we shrink back from that word quite a bit. It maybe even causes us to cringe a little bit to use that word government. Now, we have a distaste for that word. Probably keeps us from using that word like we should, or even maybe how it was used in the past. But we all have some form of government in our lives. We do in our personal lives. In fact, if you go back to Noah Webster's first dictionary from, I think it was 1827 of the English language, I think, if I remember correctly, the first definition he gave for the word government was self-government. I don't even think that shows up anymore. I checked once, but my memory does not serve me right now. I don't think that's even in Webster's Dictionary anymore, self-government. If it is, it isn't the first definition. Our idea of government is not of the self anymore.

 But let's be honest, we do have a way in which we manage our personal lives. We have standards that we live by, and those things govern what we do and what we don't do. The same is true in our families. We have a system. We have a standard of family government that we live by. Now, we wouldn't sit down with our families and say, Let us draw forth the constitution for which shall govern this family. We would never do that. But regardless, we have norms and we have guidelines that structure our lives. Government is a necessary thing, and it's something that we all have. This is a reality in all spheres of the human experience. It goes without saying that there's a need for church government. The important question we have then is, do we believe that God has given us instructions and guidelines and principles on how we are to govern the church? Or do we believe that the governing of the church, the government that the church has, is something that is just something that we should come up with with our own ideas on how things would best run based upon what we think?

 Is church government the idea of God, or is it the idea of man? This is an important question for us to consider, and maybe you've thought this through, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I really asked this question on whether it mattered, whether a form of church government was Biblical. I actually didn't give much consideration to it on how churches operated. Didn't think it was a big deal. I have an undergrad degree in religion. We talked about it. I didn't think it really mattered which system there was or whether one was more Biblical than the other. I have a Masters of Divinity. We didn't talk about it that much in seminary through the ordination process. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but I don't remember us considering whether or not it mattered, whether or not a system of church government was Biblical. It just never was something. Again, maybe it wasn't the institutions, maybe it was me and my just not caring, but I hadn't thought about it before. Well, suddenly you come to Edgerton, Minnesota, and you become a pastor, and you have to think about these things. It was probably four or five years ago, roughly, that I really started to think about the importance of this question.

 It's embarrassing to say that. I went through all these processes, and it wasn't until after I was having it put in front of me that I really started to think about it. But I was grateful, actually, that this topic came to mind and I started considering it because I believe that that was preparing me for the process that we were going to be going through, as we consider denominational affiliation. Fast forward to about two months ago, if I remember correctly, our elders have been working through some videos that a pastor in our Presbytery made, working through what's known as the EPC leadership guide. We've been working through this, and a pastor in our Presbytery made some videos doing it, cutting off the fat and getting to the meat. This is a great book, fantastic book. If you would like a copy of it to look at, just ask me. You can't have this one. It's my personal copy. In May during a rainstorm, some girls getting in my vehicle after softball practice did some damage to it. Two of them might be in this room. This one's a little beat up, Cleat, Marks and Mud, but I will get you one.

 It's a great book to look at. Anyway, after we finish chapter 12 on the government of the church, it was suggested that perhaps it would be a good idea for the congregation to know this information about how the church works. I was asked whether it would be possible to have a short sermon series prior to the culmination of our process of transferring. But also the greater thought was this is good information to know because we're going to be nominating elders and deacons very shortly, and this is a good thing for us to consider. Long story short, we're taking two weeks prior to starting a five-week series on September 10th called Understanding Grace. These two weeks, we're going to consider how Jesus governs his church. This week, we're considering the way in which the church is structured. Next week, we're going to be considering the officers of the church. Now, these will be slightly different than a traditional sermon, but regardless of the type of information being given, the point, like any sermon here, is to show the work of Christ and the grace that he shows to his people. I hope that comes through in how I give you some of these maybe boring details this morning, but I hope that comes through.

 This morning, after we look at the three main types of church government, we're going to take a look at the passages that we read this morning and consider how these passages show us the model of church government that our congregation is a part of. We will see that God has given us a system with a plurality of elders who care for the people of God and protect the people of God. As we look at the three main systems of church government today, you may think that you don't know much about this. But as we go through them, I'm guessing that you will probably find out that maybe you know a little bit more than you think you do. This comes from the way these systems of church government are named. Probably the one that is best known, the system of church government that is most familiar to people, I would say that it's well-known, but at the same time, it's mysterious to us, and that is the episcopal system of church government. I say best-known because this is the system of government that the Roman Catholic Church uses. The word episcopal comes from the Greek word, which is bishop, which means bishop, and we know that word, bishop, we've heard it.

 We know that the Roman Catholic Church, for example, has cardinals. We're also familiar with the person at the top of the Roman Catholic Church, the bishop of Rome, who is more commonly known as the Pope. We're familiar with a lot of that terminology, but you likely don't know much about what they do. You probably do understand, though, that this system of church government is a top-down system. That's the important thing for us to remember. It's a top-down, and that is the correct way to understand it. In the episcopal system, there's a hierarchy, and it's a hierarchy of individuals. This system isn't just limited to Roman Catholic. It's also the system for, believe it or not, Episcopalians, they have that system as well. I know that's confusing. It's in their name. But also the Methodist Church has a form of an episcopal system of church government. Well, then on the other end of the spectrum, there's congregational church government. Now, the name, once again, helps us to understand how it works. Like I said, just looking at these names, we come away with an understanding of what the system is. Now, this time we don't need to go to the Greek language to understand what this means.

 We know what congregational means. We know that, or we can understand that in this system, each individual church body is autonomous. They basically run themselves. These churches will maybe have a board of deacons or a board of elders, but they simply govern that individual church body. There is no other outside authority. They have the ultimate authority for the congregation, and they may be affiliated with other congregational churches. The best example is probably like the Southern Baptist Convention. They are affiliated with each other for the purpose of missions and some other things, but each church is still autonomous. There is no hierarchy of any kind that can bring the church back in line if they fall into air, in doctrine or practice. Each one is autonomous. That's congregational government. Finally, we come to the Presbyterian system of church government. Now, we aren't looking at this system last because it's the system we've always used, and we're going to have it be last. I don't have to explain very much or whatever. The reason I have this third in our explanation is because really it's the middle way between the other two. You can better understand the Presbyterian system once you understand the Episcopalian and congregational.

 Because in the Presbyterian system, there is a hierarchy, but it's not a hierarchy of individuals. It's a hierarchy of church courts consisting of a plurality of elders at each level. Now, let me explain what I mean by that phrase. I've used it once already and I'll probably use it again. I want to make sure that before that phrase comes out of my mouth too many times, I don't just assume everybody knows what I mean. What I mean by a plurality of elders is that in this system of church government, there are multiple people who serve in that role of elders, and it happens at each level, that there's multiple people at each spot. This means that no one person can wield too much authority and power. There's not just a pastor or a teaching elder, and he's the one who makes all the decisions. There is no hierarchy of people up the system as individuals. It is a group. It is a plurality for the reason that discernment can happen amongst multiple people. We can understand why this is. We get why this is the case. Human sin and depravity is a reality that we have to deal with even in the church.

 Reformed people have a very high view of sin. It shouldn't surprise us that in the reform tradition, both in the Presbyterian tradition and in the Dutch reform tradition, this system of church government is what rules the day almost unanimously. Why? Because we understand total depravity and human sinfulness. This plurality of elders is the way that the church is governed. There's a hierarchy to maintain order and practice and doctrine, but it isn't by individuals. It's that plurality once again. Congragations have a lot of freedom, but there are church courts for the purpose of keeping things on course and for the purpose of protecting people from abuse of power in the local congregations. This hierarchy is a reality, but it consists of those who are elders active at the congregational level, and then at the respiratory level, and then at the general assembly level. I think maybe the best way I've ever heard this system of church government described is that it's a grass roots system. Yes, there is an authority at the top, but it's rooted in the authority at the bottom. It starts there. It starts with elders who are active in the church. They understand the church at the local level, and then they are engaged at the next level and at the next level.

 It means that no one person can ever have too much power at this level. In our new system, the way that the EPC does Presbyterian government, as we've talked about before, there are two lay elders for every teaching elder or pastor. That's the way this is set up. Again, it's grassroots. It's grassroots because it's lay people engaged in every level of the system. If we have a problem in a congregation in the Presbyterian system, one person can't come in, take over, or enact their rule on us, there's a plurality of elders. Again, congregational level, plurality at the Presbyterian level. Then if someone wants to appeal even higher to the general assembly level, it is, again, this plurality of elders. Again, no one person has authority. It's the body of elders as a whole where the authority resides. With that very quick overview, I know it probably didn't feel very quick, especially when I look at the clock, but that is a quick way to understand it. I want us to see how the passages of scripture that we read this morning show us how this system of church government that we have is in God's word.

 It's often thought of that there's no real Biblical system of church government because the Bible doesn't have a do this and do that and don't do this approach to how the church operates. There's not a list, but we have to remember that isn't the purpose of God's word to give us these things. The Bible is an unfolding story of redemption, and it shows us through laws and examples how we're to live in the light of the redemption that has been graciously bestowed upon us in Christ. From those stories, from those principles, from those things that we see the church doing in the Bible, we come to understand how we do things now. As I said a few minutes ago, before I spelled out the three main systems of church government, we're going to see how this system that we have cares for the people of God and protects the people of God. We read this morning from the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament, we see Moses, he is upset with the burden of caring for the people of God. They were upset and they were hungry. Moses cries out to God asking some very important questions.

 Seriously, as you read that passage this morning along with me, did you imagine the burden that Moses must have felt in that? I'm guessing his doctor probably was telling him he needed to get some blood pressure medication. Imagine caring for that many people. He needed blood pressure medication and a vacation. That's what he needed. Here we have thousands upon thousands upon, thousands of people in the congregation of Israel wandering in the wilderness, and they have one person to care for their needs both physically and spiritually. That's a burden that none of us can even imagine having to carry. There's honestly no way that any one person could do that. While the church is not in the same position as Moses with the Israelis in the wilderness, the church is the congregation of Christ, and there to be cared for. It isn't about food and drink, but being cared for and supported in spiritual health and vitality. That is more than one person could possibly do for a body of people. We see a model in what God did for Moses and for the people of Israel for what we should do in the church as we look at verses 16 and 17.

 God gave the people of Israel this gift of elders to help care for them. There was too much for Moses to bear alone, and so the Spirit was given to 70 elders of Israel to care for the people of God. It's important that we notice something here and in the New Testament, we get the idea of elders having a very important role to play, and it is a very defined role. The task that is set before elders is to be servants, first and foremost. They are servants for the people of God. To be an elder is not like being on a board of directors in the secular realm where your primary job is to make decisions and to run things. That's not the office of elder. The job of being an elder is to be a servant for God's people, to care for them, to pray for them, because a pastor can't do that for all the people, so the ruling elders come alongside him to care for spiritual wellbeing of the congregation. Before we move on to the idea of the role of protection, I want us to consider for a minute what an act of mercy and grace this is.

 What a gift this is from God, not just to the congregations, but to pastors as well. Caring for the spiritual needs of people can be a heavy burden. If someone were to try to do that on their own, there's no way they could do it. It would also be taxing for just a couple of elders, one teaching elder, one ruling elder. It's too much. That's why there's a plurality. I don't have any numbers or statistics to back up what I'm about to say, but I feel very confident in what I'm going to say. I believe that the epidemic of pastors leaving the ministry has a lot to do with pastors trying to bear the burdens like Moses had to on his own. That's probably the case that we don't have elders to help pastors along. That's where this epidemic of pastors leaving the ministry is coming from. But that's not how God intended things. God provides for his people not only by rescuing them, but by providing for them what they need. He provides this idea that there are elders who care for people. With that in mind, we see the protection. We look at the care, but now we're seeing the protection that a plurality of elders provides as we look at two passages here from the Book of Acts.

 First, we looked at the counsel in Jerusalem. Now, the reason for this counsel was something that wouldn't even be on our radar, but it was a significant issue for the early church. People known as Judaismizers were teaching that in addition to faith in Christ, you needed to be circumcised in order to be saved. Again, this is a foreign idea to us, but to the early church, this was a very big deal because in the Old Testament, the covenant sign of the people of God was circumcision. We've seen this back as we've been working through Genesis in the Old Testament with Abraham, all that. We've seen that. Well, the reason this became a huge issue in the early church is because through the ministry of Paul, a substantial number of Gentiles were coming to faith in Christ. Not being Jewish folk, they weren't circumcised. You can imagine how popular the idea was of telling grown men that they had to have this procedure done. Bet that was really popular. It was even probably more popular or more confusing, actually, when the reality would have been they were told that they had to be saved by faith in Christ, and then they had to do this thing, regardless of whether it was circumcision or something else, to say you were saved by grace alone through faith alone and then say you need to do this thing would be confusing.

 It would muddy the waters. You can't have salvation by grace alone through faith alone and then add something you have to do as a requirement. That just doesn't work. As this debate built up steam, it came to pass that the Jerusalem Council was called, and we noticed who was present as we look at verse 2. You would think that if anybody ever had the right to be individuals with a hierarchy and being able to boss people around, it would have been the apostles. They could have made this decision on their own. They're the disciples of Jesus. They're the apostles. They could have thrown their weight around and gotten this squirt away on their own. But that isn't what happened here, is it? It's the apostles and the elders who get together and sort out this important issue in the life of the church. They discern what the scriptures have to say, and they return to their individual congregations with the message that upholds the truth of the gospel that was being proclaimed. Notice they did this by calling upon what the scriptures say. We see this in verses 13-18 here. This plurality of elders came together and used scripture to determine what sound doctrine was.

 There's more to the story about the message going to the churches, but the point is that the apostles and these elders came together and determined what scripture said about the matter, and then returned to their churches to give sound doctrine to protect the people from false teachers. Before we close up, I want us to look at one other passage that in the Book of Acts that shows us this important role of protecting the people of God from false teaching. In Acts 20, Paul acknowledges that the time for his ministry may be coming to a close because of the persecution that he is facing everywhere he goes. Knowing he's not going to see these elders ever again, he gives them specific instructions to these elders from Ephesis. Now, it's likely that these elders, when it speaks about the church in Ephesis, that these aren't just elders from one specific congregation. It's from the churches in the region of Ephesis. You could make an argument this was like a respiratory meeting. Anyway, the charge that Paul makes to these elders is to pay careful attention not only to themselves, but to the flock. Notice also here that this lets us know that it's the Holy Spirit who gave these elders a job to do, and the task set before them is to be overseers of the people of God.

 What this means is spelled out for us in this passage, and we see that this is a position of servanthropy once again, and not one of having subjects under them that they get to boss around. They're to care for the church of God. Notice also why this matters so much. The reason this matters so much is that they are the called out people of God, and they were obtained at a price, and that was through the blood of Jesus. The church is of great value because of the price that was paid for her. That means that there is great importance in caring for her. We see what Paul's concern was as he considered that he was departing. It was that the people would be drawn away from the gospel. He tells these elders that there are wolves at the gate. They're going to come in. They're going to devour the flock of God. They will speak twisted things and draw people away. We think this is just in our time, don't we? Paul is talking about the wolves at the gate in his time. The elders, therefore, are called by Paul to be alert and to defend the flock.

 The care that the elders provides for the people of God is to protect them from the ravenous wolves that would devour them with false teaching. Once again, this comes back to our understanding of human sin and depravity. We understand that this can so easily happen. Therefore, this plurality of elders that God ordains to care for His people helps to protect the church by having a group to discern and to protect the flock. The imagery of wolves is really helpful here, isn't it? Because once again, one person can't do all this. One person against a wolf is probably going to lose that battle. But together, instead of being devoured on our own, the people coming together can stand strong together and have agreement to stand firm on scripture and sound doctrine and persevere against the wolves that are at the gate waiting to devour the sheep. I've done my best here this morning to give you a whole lot of information in a very limited amount of time. I hope that two things come through for us more than anything today. God blesses His people. He has blessed us not only by saving us from His wrath with the blood of His precious son, but he also blesses His people by uniting us together as His people.

 His blessings continue to overflow to us because He also governs His people through the servants that He ordains. Christ is the Lord and the head of His church, and He sends forth to care for and protect His people. Before we close up, I have two quick practical applications for us from what we've looked at today. The first is to rejoice in the truth that Jesus continually cares for His people. He has not left us to our own devices after saving us from sin. He provides for us through His word and spirit, through the church, providing elders to care for and protect His people. Jesus continually cares for his people and provides for them. That is a reason to rejoiceice. We are not left to our own devices. Secondly, we need to pray that God would raise up servants for the church who would seek his face and desire to serve the people of God in a sacrificial way that the church might be built up and protected, that we might be a beacon to the world and proclaim the saving word of the gospel so that others may be rescued from sin, death, and hell, and be brought into the community of faith with all the believers to praise the name of the Lord of heaven and earth, who is the Lord of his church, who is our savior and our king.

 Amen.

This message was delivered on August 27, 2023 by Pastor Mark Groen at First Reformed Church in Edgerton, MN. First Reformed is a congregation in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.