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1 Peter 5 we're wrapping up this short book tonight and the Bible reads in verse number 1 the elders which are among you I exhort who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed feed the flock of God which is among you taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind. Now let me start out tonight by just explaining what this means to be an elder. He's exhorting the elders among them. He's talking to all Christians in this epistle but specifically he wants to give some instructions to the elders and he uses this term elder and this is a position in the church. This doesn't just mean someone who's older than someone else. Now the word elder does often mean that of course. The Bible talks about someone being elder than someone else or someone's elder brother. So this word elder can mean that but in this context it doesn't mean that okay and let me prove it to you. Keep your finger here and go to Titus chapter 1 we're going to compare this with Titus chapter 1. I'm going to show you that the word elder is not just talking about old people it's talking about someone who is holding a position known as an elder. Now there are three terms that are used synonymously in the New Testament that we use for this position and those three terms are bishop, elder, and pastor. And all these three things are referring to the same person so when we talk about the pastor of a church we're talking about the elder, we're talking about the bishop. These three words are interchangeable. Now what's interesting is what we just read if your finger's still there in 1 Peter 5 where we just read you'll see that all three of those terms are present here because he starts out by saying in verse 1 the elders which are among you I exhort who I'm also an elder but then he says in verse 2 feed the flock of God. Now this is where we would derive the term pastor because a pastor is quite literally just a shepherd. Think of the word pasture okay and I've gotten some misspelled text messages like this hey thanks pasture Anderson right? But anyway, so pasture is where animals would eat. The shepherd is taking them out to pasture right? So you can see how these things are connected. The pastor takes the sheep out to the pasture to feed them okay? So a pastor is a shepherd, a shepherd is a pastor, a shepherd is someone who is taking care of sheep right? A shep herd like a sheep herder okay? And then of course when we talk about a pastoral group of people that means people who live as shepherds they're called pastoral peoples okay? So it says feed the flock of God which is among you that's referring to the pastor's job as pastor he's the shepherd of the flock he's to feed the flock. And then it says taking the oversight thereof well the word bishop literally means overseer. So right here we see all three terms in one scripture where it talks about how the elder is supposed to feed the flock and take the oversight thereof. So basically he's saying be an elder, be a bishop, be a pastor okay? Now look at Titus chapter 1 and we can see this even more clearly. It says in verse 5 for this cause left I thee and create that thou should have said in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee. Now right there we see that elder isn't just an old guy. You don't need a special ordination to be considered an old man okay? You just get old by default okay? But here they are ordained as elders and then he says if any be blameless the husband of one wife having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. So we see that there are qualifications for being an elder whereas just getting old is something that automatically happens to everyone right? Then he says in verse 7 for a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God. So notice he said you're going to ordain elders. These are the qualifications for an elder because a bishop has to be blameless. Do you see how that proves that bishop and elder are the same thing okay? Now these three terms if you would go back to 1 Peter chapter 5 these three things are referring to the different aspects of a pastor's job okay? The pastor has a job to feed the flock so he gets up and he preaches and he feeds the flock by feeding them spiritual meat, by teaching doctrine, preaching the Bible and he's caring for them, feeding them, nurturing them in that way. But then also he's a bishop because he's the overseer. Basically he's running things, he's making the rules, he's setting down principles for the organization and he's a leader. So he's not just a guy who gets up and feeds and preaches but he's also a leader or an overseer or a ruler that is a bishop okay? And then we see the term elder because the pastor is not to be a novice. Novice would be the opposite of being elder because novice literally means new okay? I remember when I used to ride dirt bikes I never got in any races or anything I would just ride recreationally but my dad had gotten into motocross racing and so we would go to motocross races and he had done races and there were three classes. There was novice, amateur and expert okay? And novice just simply meant you're a beginner. That's all that that means is a beginner. Now a lot of people throw this around as a slur. If there's a pastor they don't like they call him a novice. In fact I just saw that somebody last week some preacher was calling me a novice. Somebody sent me that message and the stupid thing about that is that whether you like love or hate me I'm not a beginner in any sense of that word because I've been saved for 31 years. I've been an independent Baptist since I was born okay? So I'm not new to being a Baptist. I'm not new to salvation. I'm not new to being a pastor. I've been pastor for 13 and a half years. I've been married for 18 and a half years. I have my 11th child on the way so it's kind of hard to figure out in what way I'm a novice. I'm definitely not new to the Bible. I mean I've read the Bible many scores of times and so I'm not new to pastoring. I'm not new to church. I'm not new. Now if somebody doesn't like me why don't they just say I don't like him. He's bad or whatever they want to criticize about me but it's kind of silly when people will use this as an attack because it's not an insult because being a novice is not a bad thing. If I'm going to attack someone with something I'm going to throw a term at them that's something bad. Hey you're a scoundrel. You're rotten. You're a beast. But I'm not going to say you're a novice because being a novice is not bad. Did you know that we've all been a novice at some point? But I was a novice when some of your mamas was wiping your nose. No I'm just kidding. I'm just saying like yeah I was a novice once. You were a novice. We've all been a novice because you can't become an amateur or an expert in dirt bikes until you're a novice. Everybody starts out as a novice right? So there's nothing wrong with being a novice. It's just that you don't want to put a novice behind the pulpit. What that means is you don't want to take someone who's newly saved and put them behind the pulpit. You don't want to put a new believer. You don't want to put a newlywed behind the pulpit. He's too new to marriage and too new to family. He needs to be tested. He needs to be proven in his family life. So we shouldn't have a novice behind the pulpit because we don't want a new Christian or somebody who just became a Baptist or oh I got saved a long time ago but I just got in church. Okay well you're not ready to be a pastor. Oh I'm just a brand newlywed or I'm just a brand new parent. My wife just had her first baby. You know you need a little more time, experience, maturity. So the elder is called an elder not because he's the oldest guy in the building but because of the fact that he is elder spiritually. Spiritually speaking it means that he's been saved a long time right? As opposed to other people who've been saved a shorter amount of time. The elder is called an elder because he's supposed to be spiritually mature, spiritually grown up, experienced in the faith, etc. So that's why the pastor is called an elder. That's another aspect of his job is to provide maturity, stability, experience. Those are things that are important in a pastor. You don't want to have a pastor who's just this brand new unproven guy, loose cannon. We don't know what he's going to do. We don't know what he's going to say. We don't know what he's going to preach. Right? We want somebody who's stable. Now I've been accused of being unstable. That's kind of funny since I've only been the pastor of one church and I've been the pastor here for 13 and a half years. I've been married to the same woman for 18 and a half years. I've only lived in three cities in my whole life. I'm pretty stable. Okay? No I'm just kidding. I'm stable. What's funny is that this guy was attacking me and saying how, oh the new IFB is unstable. You know the old IFB is really stable. Really because the average pastor in the old IFB stays in a pulpit for two years. That's the average. That's the national average. These guys are playing musical churches and they switch churches every two years on average. I've met guys who are in their sixth church, fourth church, fifth church. And look, it is what it is, but stability is something that should be found in an elder. Right? Being consistent, not just jumping around and you shouldn't be switching churches every two years. Something's wrong with that picture. Amen? You know, I plan to stay here until I go to the grave. You know, if the Lord will. If God allows me to do that, I would love to just be the pastor here until the bitter end. So, we see these three aspects. The overseer aspect that's encapsulated in the word bishop, then the mature, knowing the Bible, been saved a long time aspect, which is the elder that's there. And then we also have the aspect of being a shepherd, caring for the flock, feeding the flock, nourishing the flock, giving the spiritual food and the spiritual pasture. Okay? So, in 1 Peter chapter 5, now that we've got that out of the way, it says, the elders which are among you I exhort who am also an elder. So, we see that Peter himself was an elder. John also calls himself an elder in the books of 2nd and 3rd John. And so, we see that these guys were pastors. In addition to being apostles, they were also pastors. That's why he says here that he is an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ. That has to do with his role of an apostle because the apostles were men who actually witnessed Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. And so, he's a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. So, if we want to look for guys in the Bible to be our pattern pastors or example pastors, a couple of good guys to look at would be Peter and John. You know, we could also look at guys like Timothy and Titus. The apostle Paul is the wrong guy to look at. The apostle Paul is not called an elder. He's not called a bishop. He's not called a pastor because he wasn't one. He was an apostle. He was a missionary and he went around starting churches and being a missionary, but he was not the pastor of a church. He wasn't qualified to be a pastor because he was not married and did not have children. Neither he nor Barnabas were married. All of the other apostles were married, the Bible tells us, but Paul and Barnabas specifically were not married. They were just single guys who dedicated themselves fully to the Lord. That's why Paul was able in 1st Corinthians 7 to talk about the virtues of being single and unencumbered with family and being able to serve God full time as a single man. He was living that lifestyle and that's a rare person. Not everyone has that gift, but some people do and the apostle Paul was one of them. So we see here that these are example pastors, Peter and John. So he's giving advice to pastors and this is coming from a pastor to a pastor. Peter says, feed the flock of God which is among you. Okay. Now he's speaking from the church at Babylon. This is where the fable comes from that Peter is the first pope. Who's ever heard that before that Peter is the first pope? The reason why that is out there is because he's the pastor of the church at Rome. He's the pastor of the church at Babylon which I believe is most likely referring to Rome and he is there as a pastor, but he can't be the first pope because the pope is a totally different thing than what Peter is. The pope is a completely different animal, okay, because the pope has people bowing down to him. Do you remember what happened when people tried to bow down to Peter? He said, oh, get up on your feet. I'm also a man as thou art. So Peter did not receive worship. He didn't have people bowing down to him and kissing his toe like people do to the pope. Not only that, but the popes are celibate whereas Peter was married. One of Jesus' notable miracles was that Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law. Nobody has a mother-in-law without getting married. Nobody says, you know, I don't want to get married, but I feel like I need a mother-in-law. Okay, you know, a mother-in-law is something that comes along with being married whether you like it or not, okay. So Peter had a mother-in-law, ergo Peter was married, plus the apostle Paul stated that all the other apostles were married except for him and Barnabas. So he was not the first pope, but he was very likely pastor of a church in the city of Rome, okay. So he's giving advice to other pastors in verse 2 saying, feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint but willingly, not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind. So here we see two reasons not to go into the ministry, right. Two reasons not to become a pastor. Reason number one not to become a pastor is because someone else is pushing you to do that and you don't really want to do that. That's not really your will, but someone else is pushing you or telling you, hey, you need to be a pastor. Maybe your wife is trying to push you. I've seen wives try to push their husbands to be a pastor, parents trying to push their children to be a pastor. You need to go into full-time Christian service, you need to be a pastor. We should not take the oversight of the house of God by constraint. Constraint is when someone's pushing you to do something. We should do it willingly, meaning we should want to do it. That's why it says in 1 Timothy 3, if any man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. Being a pastor is something that you should have a desire for. Not your parents or your wife or your brother or people just pushing you from around you. Hey, you preach so well, you need to be a pastor. Maybe you just don't belong in that position as pastor. Maybe you can preach in other capacities. You can do soul-winning, you can preach as a guest preacher, you can fill in, whatever. But it's not everyone who's cut out to be a pastor. Let me explain something to you. Being a pastor is not just about getting up and being able to preach. There's a lot more to it. There have been a lot of guys who could preach very well, but they didn't make it as a pastor. Or they didn't make it, you know, well as a pastor. Why? Because being a pastor, there's so much more to it than that. You have to be able to have the leadership, you have to be able to withstand the onslaught of the devil that he points at you. You have to be able to deal with people, and there's just a lot more to it than just getting up and preaching. You know, would to God if we're just getting up and preaching, right? It'd be a piece of cake job, all right, if you were good at preaching. But you know, there's a lot of other difficult things that you constantly have to deal with, and people who are weak leaders and namby-pamby, it doesn't matter how good of a sermon they preach, you know, they can let things get out of control or go down a dark path. So don't try to push people into pastoring if that's not something that they want to do. God will give them that desire. If it's God's will for your life to pastor, you'll have that desire. God will give you that desire, and if somebody doesn't want to do it, then they should just serve God as a church member, and that's great. And save it for the people who do want to do it. But then he also says not for filthy lucre. So another bad reason to go into the ministry is for money. Some people might just want to become a pastor because they want to get paid. They just see it as a way for them to make good money. Maybe they're not really making it very well in the secular world when it comes to finances, and they just want to make more money, so they just want to get a job being a pastor so that they can make money. Or even worse yet, so that they can get access to money that's not theirs and steal money like a Judas Iscariot. That's even worse. But either way, whether you're teaching things you ought not for filthy lucre's sake, as the Bible says in Titus, or whether you're actually stealing the money, as Judas Iscariot was, a greedy, covetous person, someone who desires riches, should never become a pastor. Not by constraint, willingly. Not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. When you see pastors today that are millionaires, you know why they got into that. You know what they're into. And you know what, you're never going to find me living in a fancy house, or driving a fancy car, or wearing fancy clothes, because God has not called preachers to be rich, period. Now I'm not against you if you get rich out in the secular world, and you're out plumbing, and doing electrical, and carpentry, or computers, or whatever field you're in, and you end up making a lot of money in the business world, hey, great, more power to you if you go out making honest living, and you do it honestly and rightly, and you don't just love money, and chase after money, but if you just do well, and make money, great. But you know what, as a pastor, how do you make these giant windfalls of money, honestly, as a pastor? You don't. Okay? So I don't think that pastors should be living in poverty. I don't think that they should be rich, either. I think that they should just have enough money to support their family, and get by, and live a modest, normal, decent life, a sensible life. So beware of pastor money bags, driving the jaguar, driving the fancy car, living in the fancy house. He's doing it probably for filthy lucre, and often the Bible warns of pastors who will teach things they ought not for filthy lucre's sake, because then they start tailoring their message on whatever's going to get them paid, okay? So whatever's the popular doctrine, that's what they're going to preach. So he says, neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being in samples to the flock. Here's a third bad reason to get into the ministry, because you just want to be a lord. You just want to have power over people. You just want that power. That's bad as well. So you don't want to do it because you're being pushed into it. You don't want to do it for the money, and you don't want to do it because you desire a position of power. And there are pastors, obviously, who abuse their power. They are megalomaniacal, where they will basically try to run people's lives and tell everybody what to do, and even get involved in their personal lives just to exert power. Or they're just on a power trip where they want to be treated like a celebrity everywhere that they go. There are pastors who will actually go somewhere as a guest speaker, and they have all these demands that they make. And they have someone else make the demands, so it doesn't seem as arrogant. But they'll have their assistant make a bunch of demands like, well, here's what you need to have ready for Dr. Anderson when he gets there. He's going to need a fruit basket and a roll of quarters, and he needs to be picked up by the pastor. Don't send someone else to pick him up. You pick him up. He doesn't want to be picked up by one of your underlings. He must be picked up by the pastor himself, and he's going to be staying in a five-star hotel, and he wants steak and lobster, and he wants it now. So obviously there are guys, and I'm joking around, but there are pastors who could tell you stories where they brought in big-name preachers, and they were literally given lists of this is the fruit basket, this is the money, here's the love offering, he's going to need at least $1,000 as a love offering, and he's going to need these gifts and these comforts, and you're going to pick him up yourself. Don't send some bozo to pick him up because he doesn't want some bozo talking his ear off or whatever. You're going to pick him up. And they make all these demands for everything. That's a power trip. So you don't want to be this lord over God's heritage. Instead, you want to be an ensemble to the flock. The pastor's job is not to be served, the pastor's job is to serve. So the pastor's job is to help other people. He goes out and does the soul winning. He doesn't just say, all right guys, you go soul winning, I'll wait here. He goes out, he does the work of an evangelist, he goes soul winning, he preaches the sermons, and he doesn't expect you to wait on him, and it's not all about him. These are some bad people who go into the ministry, right? People who just go into it because, oh, this is what my mom always wanted me to do. The mama called papa sent preacher, or the one who's in it for the money, whether that be just stealing or just teaching lies so you can get a bigger paycheck or whatever, or the guy who's on a power trip. But here's the thing, these bad guys are out there, aren't they? But here's what we don't want to do. We don't want to punish the good guys for what the bad guys did. So when the bad guys go out and do all this bad stuff and they're stealing money and they're gambling and they're going to the hookers and whatever, snorting coke or whatever these people do, you don't want to turn around and just get mad at your pastor who's not doing any of that stuff and then just start taking, oh yeah, these pastors, they're all just these money grabbing. No they're not. Now these wicked false prophets, according to 2 Peter chapter 2, will cause the way of truth to be evil spoken of. What do they do? They give church a bad name. They give pastors a bad name. They give all of us a bad name. But we should not hold that against guys that are good guys that are not doing that stuff. There are a lot of bad pastors out there and there are a lot of great pastors out there. You know why? Because being in the ministry attracts the best people and the worst people. That's what it does. It attracts the best people and it attracts the worst people, right? The best people who really do love the Lord and they want to do right and whatever. So you get a lot of great people. There are a lot of great pastors that I know, great friends that I have, you know, and people that I've known over the years, people that have been a great influence on my life. I mean, look, I would not be up here preaching right now, I wouldn't be soul winning and serving the Lord if it weren't for preachers and teachers that have gone before me and made me who I am. I'm not a self-made man up here. If it weren't for all the Sunday school teachers I had, Christian school teachers, pastors, and more important than any of those, my parents themselves, they invested in me and made me who I am. So pastors and teachers can be a blessing to you. And then, of course, along the way there were some bad teachers and bad pastors that I've been exposed to as well. So don't just paint with a broad brush. Yeah, there are guys that are on a power trip and they want to tell you how to run your personal life. I mean, I've heard pastors get up and say, hey, before you paint your house you need to come and ask me. My advice on that, okay? I've heard that. If I've heard that once, I've heard that 20 times. Have you heard that? Yeah, she's heard it. She was there. They'll tell you, hey, before you make any decisions, before you do that, you need to come talk to me and get my counsel. And they'll use that counseling as a way to just really manage people's lives and tell them what to do and everything like that. Now, look, if you need advice, yeah, ask people in your life, godly people in your life, to get advice. But, you know, if you need advice on what color to paint your house, you know, I'm partially colorblind so I'm the wrong person to ask, all right? So ask somebody else. I don't care what color you paint your house. I don't care what part of town you live in. I don't care, you know, what you do in your personal life as long as you're not committing some grievous sin that would cause you to be thrown out of the church, you can go do whatever you want, okay? So there are guys on a power trip. There are thieves and greedy preachers. There are the mama called and papa sent types whose heart is not in it. But there are also good preachers. And when the chief shepherd shall appear, the Bible says, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away, if you do it right. How do you get that crown of glory as a pastor? Well, you've got to do things willingly. You've got to do them not for the money. And you've got to do them without being a lord over the flock, but rather being an example to the flock. You know, being one of the brethren and going out there and doing the work yourself, doing the soul-winding yourself, living the life that you expect other people to live. You know, the Pharisees, what they did was they laid heavy burdens upon man and grievous to be born, but they wouldn't touch them with so much as their little finger. Meaning that they would preach really strict rules, but then they lived a loose life themselves, right? Now, here's the thing about that. Obviously no pastor is sinless or perfect. I am not sinless. I am not perfect. But I am to practice what I preach. If I say, hey, this is how we should live our lives, then I'm going to walk out that door. I'm going to live my life according to what I preached. That is what it means to have integrity as a pastor. If a pastor gets up and preaches all these rules, and then he goes out and just lives a lascivious life, then that makes him a mega-hypocrite. It's wicked. He's not going to get the crown of glory. He's not going to get the rewards. And in fact, the Bible says, brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. So it's a sober thought to think about becoming a pastor. Don't take it lightly and say, oh, that looks cool. That looks fun. Are you willing to drink of the cup that I drink of and be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized? You know, you've got to think about what goes into being a pastor. There's a lot of attack on your life. There's a lot of pressure. There are constantly people trying to bring heresy into the church, trying to get you to become liberal or soften things up. You're getting attacked, lied about, criticized all the time. There's a spiritual attack on you. There are attacks without, attacks within. It's a battle. And you've got to be in it for the long haul, not just on a trial basis. And of course, don't get me wrong, it's not bad being a pastor. I love being a pastor. I enjoy being a pastor. But here's the thing. If I had to stop being pastor tomorrow, I'd still be happy. I'd still be serving God. I'd still be soul winning. So you know, it's great to be a pastor. It has its blessings. It has its sorrows. It's a mixed bag. But you know what? It's just like everyone else's life is the same way. Your Christian life and my Christian life are a mixture of good things and evil things, okay? Bad and good. Things that come to us that are evil or harmful and things that come to us that are good. But you know what? What did Job say? Hey, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. He said, what? Should we receive good at the hand of the Lord only and shall we not receive evil? He said, look, we're going to receive good and evil from the Lord and blessed be the name of the Lord. So there are blessings to being a pastor and there are negatives to being a pastor. You have to be ready to accept and embrace both. But you know what? Being a church member, you have your blessings and you have your troubles and trials and tribulations. And as the saying goes, if all our troubles were hung on a line, you'd take yours and I'd take mine, right? So anyway, let's keep going. It says in verse 4, when the chief shepherd shall appear, you shall receive a crown of glory that faded not away. So we see here again that shepherd is synonymous with elder, bishop, overseer because pastor means shepherd. And he says here that Jesus Christ is the chief shepherd. What are we? We are the under shepherd, right? We're the under shepherd. We are his assistant on this earth. The Bible also calls Jesus Christ the bishop, okay? So he's called the bishop as well. And of course, he's the elder, of course, because he was in the beginning with God and he was God. So you can't get any elder than that. So he's the elder. He's the chief shepherd. He is the bishop of our souls, the Bible tells us. Now it says in verse 5, likewise ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder, yea all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility, for God resisted the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Now this is the verse that people will try to use to try to say, oh, elder just means older. It doesn't mean a position. Well guess what? It means both. Okay. In this verse, 5, it is just talking about people that are older. But earlier, he's talking about the position of an elder. He said, well how can it be in the same passage one word is being used in two different ways? Well guess what? All throughout the Bible, I can show you examples of one word being used in more than one way in one passage, okay? Obviously, it's on his mind as he's writing this letter, he's talking about the elder, talking about the elder, and then that jogs his mind of saying, oh, well, you know, also we need to make sure that the younger submit unto the elder and respect your elders. Okay. So that's obviously just a train of thought. And you say, well, I thought God wrote the Bible. Of course God wrote the Bible, but God used human beings to write the Bible and their holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost and every word of God is inspired by God, but it was also written by human beings who wrote about the things that they were going through and thinking about at that moment. God worked in their lives so that they would think about the right things and be talking about the right things. Okay. But obviously, if we read books written by Peter, they don't sound like books written by John. Why? Because they're written by two different authors. And this is the wonderful thing about the Bible, it is both human and divine, just like our savior Jesus Christ is both human and divine, right? The Bible is human. I mean, if you read the Bible, it's human, but it's also divine. Jesus Christ was without sin. The Bible is totally without error. So the Bible never says anything that isn't true or teaches anything that's wrong, just like Jesus Christ never sinned. So the, and by the way, here's an example of a word being used in two different ways in one verse. How about John 1-1? In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. That God right there means God the Father. He was with God the Father and he was God. Now that's not God the Father anymore, friend, because Jesus is not God the Father. Jesus is the Son of God. So therefore we see here when it says the word was God, it's basically talking about the divinity, the Godhead of Jesus Christ, that he is God, that he is divine, but he's not the Father. But obviously when it says he was with God, it's talking about the Father. Otherwise that would be a nonsensical statement to say, well, he was with God and he was God. Well, which one is it? It's because the word God is being used in two different ways in that verse. So anyway, let's keep going here in chapter 5 verse 5, it says, likewise ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. And then he goes on to say, yea, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility for God resisted the proud and giveth grace to the humble. So church is not a place where we should be trying to climb some kind of ladder or trying to always be the preeminent one, right? We don't want to be like that guy who loved to have the preeminence among them, diatrophes, right? We want to be someone who's a team player. We're not looking for personal glory. We just want to get on the team and do something great for God. You know, when we go on a missions trip or when we're on a soul winning outing or on an Indian reservation trip, hey, it doesn't matter whether we're the one giving orders or receiving orders, we just get in there, we get on a team, we do the soul winning, we do our best. And you know what? God gives the increase. And it doesn't matter whether our team got more salvations or the other team got more salvations. Folks, we're all on the same team, we're working together, we're serving God. So we shouldn't be vying for position or status or authority. After all these things do the Gentiles seek, right? And the Bible says that those that are great among the Gentiles exercise lordship over them. But it shall not be so among you. Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant. So we should be in the habit of submitting to one another. What does that mean to submit to one another? It simply means to do what other people want to do. It means that you don't always have to be the person that picks what restaurant we're going to or, you know, what we're going to do here or there or the other. You know, sometimes we do what the group wants to do or what someone else wants to do and don't be someone who always has to have your way, right? What does it mean to submit? I mean, what does that word mean, submit? It basically means you want something and someone else wants something else and you go with what they want. That's what submission is. Isn't that what it means? You know, you want to go there, I want to go here, you know what, let's go where you want to go. That's submission. We're going to submit my will to your will, not my will but thine be done. You know, there have been times on some of these Indian reservation trips where I wanted to do something and nobody else wanted to do it. And then it's just like, okay, well then we're not going to do it. You know, we were at Monument Valley and the choice was to go on a hike on foot or take a drive through Monument Valley. I'm like, we've been in the car for many hours, let's go on the hike. Everybody's like, drive, let's do the drive, you know. So I'm like, hey, we'll do the drive, you know. Then on a future trip, we got to do the hike. But anyway, you know, we did the drive or, you know, there have been times when I wanted to eat at a certain place, nobody else wants it. It's like, alright, well then let's go with what you guys want to do, okay. There have been times when, you know, we were singing a song and I thought it should be sung a certain way when we were doing those recording sessions and everybody else kind of voted me down and I'm just like, hey, okay, let's go with the other way. Now obviously as the pastor, there are times when I have to put my foot down, okay. When it comes to doctrine, when it comes to right and wrong or when it even comes to the style and culture of our church, I'm not going to let it become worldly or contemporary or anything like that. So there are times when I have to draw the line. But when we're still within the realm of what's godly, what's righteous, there's some give and take that needs to go on from all of us, even myself included, where we basically work together as a team player, a team player. You know, Paul and I work together on making these movies, but you know what, I don't always get my way all the time on these movies. There are times when I submit to him and basically it ends up coming out his way. But you know what, I'm the pastor of the church, but he's the director of the film, so you see how there's a little bit of submitting one to another there of working together, being a team. I don't always get my way. He doesn't always force his way. You know, sometimes we go with what I want, sometimes we go with what he wants because we're a team, right. This is just basic being a part of a team, okay. And by the way, you and your wife are a team. Now obviously, God has put an authority structure in place where the husband is the head of the wife. But at the same time, when you're, you know, it doesn't mean that you just never give your wife what she wants because you're the boss, right. It's good to basically give and take, do things that she wants to do sometimes even though you're the authority, even though you're firmly in authority. Now here's the thing, if you're a wife who's constantly disobeying her husband and disrespecting her husband, guess what, your husband's not going to want to submit to you at all or do anything your way ever because he's in a power struggle with you and he has to keep asserting himself, I'm the boss and I don't blame him because no man wants to be henpecked and ruled over by his wife. And so if a woman is henpecking him, nagging him, telling him what to do and disrespecting him, you know what, he's just going to have to basically tighten things up in order to stay in authority because she is rebellious and out of line. And you know what, if you teenagers want your parents to go your way, guess what, stop rebelling against your parents because if you're rebelling against your parents, that's just going to make your parents get more strict because they're going to say, well I better tighten things up because my teenager thinks that they're the boss and they can do what they want, well I better show him who the boss is and they're going to have to tighten things up. Whereas if the teenager is a kind, respectful, obedient teenager, then you know what, I'm going to look at that teenager and you know what I'm going to say, what do you want to do son? What do you want to do daughter? Where would you like to go? How do you want things to go? Why? Because when you're a submissive follower that's doing what's right, then guess what, you're going to get more leeway from your authority. And so anyway, these are two ideas that need to be balanced with one another. One idea is that you have certain people that are in authority and people that are not in authority and then you just have the general give and take of all Christians being humble people that want to please other people, okay? So just because the husband is the head of the wife and he's the boss, he should still want to please his wife, make her happy, do nice things for her because the Bible says husbands love your wives, nourish them, cherish them, right? And just because the parents are the bosses of the children doesn't mean that the parents don't want to do what the children like and say hey children, what do you guys like? What do you want to do? So servant leadership is what we're talking about. Those that are willing to serve and do what's right. Another way that this will sometimes be explained in a political realm is a benevolent dictatorship. A benevolent dictatorship, a dictator who basically does what's best for the people and not what's best for himself. Now this is what a family should look like. I mean the father is the head of the home. It's not a democracy. I mean who should we, what's the voting age in my house? You know, should we let all the toddlers and all the little children vote on how we're going to do things? My wife and I would be outvoted pretty fast on a lot of things. So it's not run as a democracy. It's run as a dictatorship but it's a benevolent dictatorship, okay? So voting is overrated, okay? We need leaders that are appointed by God to step in and lead but not to lead in a self-serving way, but to lead in a benevolent, self-sacrificing way. Not to make themselves rich but to make many rich, right? Not to be served but to serve, but to minister. And government is supposed to be the same way. That's why people are called ministers, like the prime minister or the minister of education or the minister of whatever. Because they're supposed to be servants, public servants, right? And so Christ is admonishing leaders to be benevolent leaders, to look out for other people and not to serve themselves. And then he's also just talking to all of us as Christians, 100% of us, should submit one to another and be clothed with humility, just being a humble person, not a guy who's demanding that everybody yield to him and everybody serve me and everybody do it my way. That's a bad Christian right there, right? To be a good Christian, you're humble and you are willing to do things other people's way. You know, let them go ahead of you in line. Let them take the best piece, the best seat, whatever. Think of others above yourselves. He says in verse 6, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. You know, this also goes to show that if you're ever going to be a leader, if you ever want to be a pastor, you have to start out by being a humble follower and then in due time, if God sees fit, then he will lift you up to a higher position of power. Once you have earned it, once you have shown him that you are faithful, you know, because if you're faithful in another man's, then you'll be given your own things, right? Now notice he says at the end of verse 5, this is a very important profound statement, for God resisted the proud and giveth grace to the humble. A lot of times we think of God's grace as something that is just given out at random or willy-nilly in the Calvinist fashion where God just picks one to bestow his grace upon and just picks other people not to. But you know, as I preached a sermon a while back called The Doctrine of Grace where I went through and showed every time grace was mentioned from Genesis all the way to Romans, I showed that God's grace responds to man. So who gets the grace? Well just, you know, God just picks certain people before the foundation of the world to give his grace to and he picked other people to withhold his grace from them. No, God gives grace to the humble. So it's not like grace is this mystery thing. I don't know how to get it. Man, I hope I'm picked. I hope grace is coming my way. No, God gives grace to the humble. It's not that God might give grace to the humble. God's going to give grace to the humble. If you are humble, you get more grace. You want more grace in your Christian life? You want God to give you his grace? Here's how you get his grace. You're humble. If you humble yourself, God gives grace to the humble. And when it comes to salvation, how do you get the grace of God unto everlasting life? It takes humility because you have to admit that you're a sinner and that you don't deserve to go to heaven and you have to fully trust Christ as your savior. Fully trust his death, burial, and resurrection and not think, oh, I'm going to heaven because I'm a good person. You're not going to get any grace like that. Oh, I'm going to heaven because I go to church and I clean up my life and turn for my sins. Well, you're not going to get any grace like that. Not of works unless any man should boast. It's the opposite of being humble, boasting and bragging. So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you've sinner, which again is a major theme of 1 Peter that we've already preached in other sermons, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Now, here's something that just jumped out at me this week. I don't know why I've never noticed this before, but isn't it amazing how you read the Bible so many times? There are always new little things jumping out at you. This jumped out at me in verse 12. I got a good laugh out of this this week. By Sylvanus, a faithful brother unto you. Now that's pretty normal, right? Because all throughout the Bible, Paul or Peter, people like that will talk about, hey, this guy is our fellow servant, our fellow laborer. This guy's a faithful brother in the Lord, my faithful companion in the Lord, right? You see a lot of that when Paul and Peter and them are giving little shout-outs to other great men of God. Peter, as he gets to the end of his life, has been burned a few times. I can relate to verse 12 here when he says, by Sylvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as I suppose. I mean, those three little words speak volumes. I mean, at least I think he's a good guy. Why? Because he's been burned. He's vouched for people in the past who turned out to be rotten. So now he's putting in this little disclaimer. Nothing in the Bible is accidental. He says, a faithful brother unto you, as I suppose. So does Peter just trust everybody? Not anymore at this point in his life, because he's an old man. He's writing this toward the very end of his life, and I can relate to this. But the devil is walking about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He just warned us, look, you've got to be sober. You've got to be vigilant. The devil is out to get you. He's out as a roaring lion. And so even our buddies sometimes can turn out to be wicked people or rotten people. Now you say, well, just sure it seems like a lot of bad people. Yeah, it's a wicked world. But not only that, the more you're doing for God, the more the devil is going to want to infiltrate you. I mean, think about this. If we were just some dead church doing nothing, then, OK, why would the devil have a target on us? We're not even doing anything. But if we're doing something big, if the great door and effectual is open unto us, there are many adversaries. You know, we were just chatting the other day, and I was talking to the twins, and they said something that kind of encouraged me, because they were talking about how you look at all these epistles of Paul, and you look at the crazy stuff that was going on in some of these churches, like Corinth. I mean, they had some very wicked sins going on, wicked things going on. And then after we talked, I was thinking about how the apostle Paul said, all they which are in Asia be turned away from me. I mean, at one point, Paul preached the gospel to all Asia. All Asia heard the word of God by Paul and his coworkers preaching the gospel. But then there came a point where all Asia turned away from him. All they which are in Asia be turned away from me. I mean, here's a region that he poured his life into, years of his life, preaching the gospel, winning people to Christ. He's going to places like Corinth, Galatia. Look how screwed up Galatia was. They're getting into workspace salvation, they're getting all Judaized, right? And we see all the problems in these churches, and what they said to me was, well, you know, hey, does that make the apostle Paul a failure? And obviously, the apostle Paul is not a failure. And the thing is, you know, when you're a guy like the apostle Paul, and you're winning a whole bunch of people to the Lord, and you're starting a whole bunch of churches, well guess what? The enemy's going to come, he's going to get all over that, there are going to be all kinds of infiltrators and phonies, and you know, it wasn't just Paul, because look at John. You know, he's got diatrophes, not even letting him come to the church and everything, and he's saying, I'm going to come down there, and I'm going to deal with that guy. You know, these guys are all getting attacked hard, so if we try to follow in their footsteps, if we try to be an apostle Paul, or try to be a John or a Peter, we should expect the same thing. Paul talked about the false brethren, crept in unawares, you say, well, I've just not seen that in other churches that I've been to. Okay, so what dead churches have you been going to? Yeah, down at First Church of the Deep Freeze, you're not going to get infiltrate, you're not going to have all these heretics being unmasked, and all the Judases and everything, but you know what, you're also not seeing the great works of God. You're certainly not preaching the gospel to an entire nation. You know, I'd rather be the apostle Paul and preach the gospel to literally an entire nation. The modern day country of Turkey is the land when he said, all Asia heard the word of God. He's talking about Western Turkey, the modern day nation, that's what it was called back then, Asia Minor, the Anatolian peninsula, and he said, hey, they all heard the word of God. They all heard the gospel. Those are established. Now look, if down the road at the end of his life, all the pastors in that area are saying, we want nothing to do with Paul, and they've gone liberal or whatever happened to them, you know what, does that make the apostle Paul a failure? No, I mean, I still want to follow in those footsteps because of the fact that it's better to do great works for God and get stabbed in the back and get attacked and get infiltrated and have your closest friends betray you. You know what, I'd rather do that and be like Jesus Christ and John and Peter and Paul than to be a do-nothing and say, oh, well, you know, we're real stable down at our church. Yeah, your attendance is so stable, nobody ever comes. We know your baptisms are steady at zero. Your salvations are steady in the single digits, right? You're nice and steady and stable, us four, no more, high steeple, few people, well, guess what, that's not the life I want to live. And so if you put yourself out there and serve God, you've got to expect problems. You've got to expect people to stab you in the back. And so let's forgive Peter here for being a little bit skeptical. Even though Silvanus is a good guy, do you blame him for saying, as I suppose, no, because I'm understanding those three words more than I ever have in my entire life, okay, because I've had so many people that I should have said as I suppose about, okay. So I can see why he said that. Why? And this comes up right after he talks about, hey, the devil is out to devour, we've got to be sober, we've got to be vigilant. Speaking of vigilance, I'm pretty sure Silvanus is a great guy. I think so, right? But I'm watching him. As I suppose, I've written briefly exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. We're in ye stand. The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you and so does Marcus by his son. Again, a major theme in 1 Peter is how all of us are God's chosen people if we're saved. Okay. So it doesn't matter whether you're in Babylon or whether you're in Jewry or whether you're in Europe, Africa, Asia, God's not a respecter of persons. There's no difference between the Jew and the Greek, bond or free. We're all one in Christ Jesus. And so the Bible says here that the church at Babylon is just as elect as you are in West Asia Minor, Galatia, the people that he's writing to. And then he says, so does Marcus my son. Now, is this his literal son? It's possible. It's not, the Bible's not conclusive, but we know that Peter was married, so I'm sure that he had children. So this could be his literal son or it could be like a son in the faith like Timothy my beloved son, Titus my beloved son. And so, and Marcus is a name of many different people in the Bible. But I believe most people think that this is the author of the book of Mark because otherwise who is the author of the book of Mark? And again, these are things that we can't really know for sure because the Bible does not state them explicitly. Now I believe that the names of the books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that those really were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I believe that that's, you know, part of the preservation of God's word is God's not going to give us this book and it's written by some totally different guy than what's on the title page, okay? So I believe God preserved that title, okay? So I do believe that they're written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And you know, people have made a big deal about this, like, well, what gives Mark the right to write a gospel? Who's this guy Mark? I don't care because I read the gospel of Mark. I know it's God's word because the Holy Spirit can tell me that. Say, well, how do you know the gospel of Mark's legit and the gospel of Thomas isn't? Okay. Spend five minutes reading the gospel of Thomas and you'll know that it's garbage. Now you read the book of Mark, it's powerful. Matthew, I mean, look, you say, well, how do we know they picked the right four gospels? Have you seen the runners up? You know, it'd be, I'm trying to think of an illustration of this. It'd be like if you had a beauty contest, right, and you have just these four amazingly beautiful women and then just everybody else is just hideous and then you're demanding that the judges, you know, we get new judges. It's like, come on. You know, we look at Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and we see perfection. We see the ultimate, right? We see the greatest literature ever written in the history of mankind in any language in any era, the greatest story ever told, the power of God. Then when we get to the gospel of Bartholomew, it's garbage. And then they're like, oh, you know, the Catholics, they're the ones who gave you your Bible. Oh, thank you for pointing out the obvious. I really needed the Catholic church to tell me that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are legit and the other ones are junk. Any five year old could have told you that because it's so obvious from the quality of the content. So we have these beautiful books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then these hideous ugly garbage books, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Judas Iscariot, Gospel of Bartholomew. It's out there. The Gospel according to Judas is out there. Yeah, I'll skip that. Thank you very much. Would he write that right after he hanged, right before he hanged himself? He basically, you know, threw the money down, wrote a quick gospel, hung himself. Folks, it's all out there somewhere. I'm sure they've got a gospel name for all the disciples. But they say, well, who wrote, you know, why is Luke writing a gospel? Who's Luke? Paul's doctor is writing a gospel? You say, well, he wasn't there. Well, thank God for the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. How do I know Luke's gospel is legit? Because the power dripping from every page of Luke's gospel that no one can duplicate and people have tried to make imitations of the Bible and they all fall flat. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are just these four mighty pillars. That's how we know they're God's word. So frankly, I don't care who Mark was. I don't care if Mark never even met Jesus. You know, if God used him to pen this powerful gospel that's clearly God's word, then I don't care who he was, okay? And I don't really care what Luke specialized in as far as a physician. I don't care if he was ear, nose and throat or what he was because, you know, he wrote the book of Luke and the book of Acts. Great job, buddy. And, you know, I don't care who wrote the book of 1 Kings either. I mean, most of the Old Testament books are anonymous. So I think some people have said, hey, this is that Mark who wrote the gospel of Mark and it's very likely that it could be. I'm not saying it's not. Because they basically want it to be somebody close to Peter so that they can basically say, hey, the reason we know Mark's legit is because he had a – it's only secondhand. You know what I mean? Because he's getting – he's talking to Peter and Peter was there so he's getting it straight from Peter. Okay. I mean, that sounds great. But against that, that's very possible that that is the way it happened. Maybe that is the way it happened. But my faith doesn't rely on it having happened that way. You know, maybe John Mark that was tagging along with Paul and Barnabas or maybe this Mark, maybe they're the same guy. Very likely since Silvanus is here and obviously they're running in that same crowd. Very likely that they're all the same guy and it's Peter's son. Also Peter's nephew named Mark. So is he the nephew? Is he the son? Is he the son in the faith? Is he John Mark? You know what? These are all great questions. You know, some of you that are here tonight might have strong opinions about this and that's fine. But, you know, I don't have a super strong opinion about it because I don't see anything explicit that says, hey, I'm the guy who wrote that second book of the New Testament. But you know what? At the end of the day, the Holy Spirit wrote that book. So it's not really that important to me who the human instrument was. Whoever he was, he was a great guy. I'll just shake his hand in heaven and figure out who he was. That will be one of my to-do lists when I get there. So he says, so does Marcus, my son. Verse 14, greet ye one another with a kiss of charity. Peace be with you all that are in Christ Jesus, amen. Let me just deal with this one last thing in this verse before we close out this book. You know, greet one another with a kiss of charity. Elsewhere, he says, greet all the brethren with a holy kiss, right? This is something that culturally we're not comfortable with, okay? Because in 2019 America, this is not our culture. Also the Bible talks about washing the saint's feet. So there are some churches that just say, hey guys, we've got to institute this. So they literally have foot washing services where they just have you just randomly wash someone else's feet in the church as an exercise in humility, okay? Where they'll institute this, hey, every time we see each other, it's just kissing. We're just kiss, kiss, kissing everybody. I don't believe that that's necessary, friend, okay? Now I've heard some men try to use this to kiss other people's wives and say, well, hey, the Bible says, greet one another with a holy kiss, you know? So pucker up, baby. You know, folks, that's a carnal, wicked interpretation here. That's not what we're talking about, okay? When he's talking about greeting the brethren with a holy kiss, okay? We're talking about something that is not amorous in nature. Now when you go to other countries, this will happen to you. Look, when we were in Jordan, remember the cab driver was kissing me, right? He comes up to me. I gave him a tip. I just gave him a normal tip. And he's like, mwah, mwah. I was like, what just happened, you know? You know, because you're not expecting it when you're an American. Now the first time I met my father-in-law, the first thing he did was kiss me on both cheeks, okay? Because when you're in Hungary, when you're in Eastern Europe, when you're in the Middle East, people will kiss you, they don't kiss you on the mouth, okay? But they will kiss you on the cheeks as a greeting and that's what they, who's ever greeted someone or been greeted that way with the kisses? All right. Yeah. Now, look, when you don't grow up with it, though, who feels weird about it? Yeah. Now, look, it's not because we're weird people. It's not just, look at it as a church full of weird people. Look at all the hundred some people that put up their hand that they felt a little weird about it. It's because it's not our culture, okay? We don't have that culture. We don't greet people that way. And so because we have a different culture, I don't think there's anything wrong with us sticking with today's culture. I don't think we need to adopt the biblical culture or I don't think we need to adopt the culture of 2,000 years ago. I think we can just apply these principles to today, okay? So when the Bible is telling us to wash the saint's feet, I think that just is telling us to be hospitable, take care of other people's needs, be willing to do a dirty job, be humble, help people out, give them what they need. You know what I mean? It doesn't mean that we literally need to wash the saint's feet because we're not in that situation. We all have a shower at home. We have our shower. We got our shampoo and our soap and I'm all taken care of. My feet are clean. I got my socks and shoes on. I don't need any help with that, all right? Now if we're living in the olden times though where they don't have running water in their house and they're wearing sandals and their feet are dirty, then the hospitable thing to do when somebody shows up at your house, the first thing you do, you wash their feet. It's just a way of showing them that they're welcome, helping them be comfortable, get the dirt off their feet. It was a need that they had. So this is something that in the ancient world was done. But in today's world, it's not relevant. Just like Jesus complains to the Pharisee at whose house he is at, remember in the book of Luke, he says, thou gavest me no kiss. Now I've never had that complaint. Now I've said that to my wife before, you know, hey, thou gavest me no kiss, right? But I'm not going to just say that to some Pharisee. I don't want a Pharisee kissing. You got to understand again, the culture, this is their culture. And I believe that it's okay to have our 2019 America culture follow biblical principles, follow scripture, but we don't have to dress up like it's 2000 years ago and hey, everybody, let's walk around in the dirt with our feet, get them nice and dirty, wash them just to go through that motion. My feet are already clean. Your feet are clean. Who feels like their feet are pretty clean right now? All right. There you go. All right. So anyway, I just wanted to make a note about that because somebody was asking about that, you know, the greeting with a kiss and I think it's just warm affection. You know, in America, we have a thing for that. It's called a handshake, right? That's what we do. You know, we grab your hand, shake it, all right. But we don't need the other thing. All right. So anyway, and like I said, look, if I go to a culture where they do that, I'll participate in it. Over there, I don't like it but I'll still go along with it because that's their culture. I'm not going to be rude. I try to, when in Rome, do as the Romans do but I don't believe that we need to force those things or adopt those things that are not part of our culture. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, okay? You know, when you're 37 years old and you've been living in America your whole life, you're not ready to just adopt this new, this whole new custom. And I don't think that the Lord expects us to. Now if I thought the Lord expected me to, then I would do whatever he wants me to do. I don't, I believe it's the spirit of the thing and that we don't need to literally wash people's feet and kiss them when we greet them. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word. Thank you for this great book of 1 Peter that we were able to get through, Lord, and learn so many great things. And I'm sure we missed the majority of what the book teaches, Lord. But thank you for the wonderful truths that we were able to extract from it this time around, Lord. And please bless us as we go our separate ways, Lord. Bless everyone who came out to church on a Sunday night, sacrificed their time because they love you and they want to hear from you.