In his sermon, Robert Bosley explores the biblical metaphor of shepherds as leaders of God's flock, emphasizing their dual duties toward God and the congregation. Using Acts 20, he explains that elders, overseers, and pastors are terms for the same office, with different roles. Shepherds must be qualified, maintain good doctrine, engage in private prayer, and have a heartfelt zeal for God. They are tasked with preaching the Word, administering sacraments, applying church discipline, and counseling individuals. Bosley underscores the importance of shepherds being well-prepared, maintaining their qualifications, and being devoted to prayer. He also highlights the historical context of shepherd imagery in Scripture and warns of the consequences of failing in these duties. The sermon concludes with encouragement for current and aspiring elders and a call for the congregation to support and pray for their leaders.

God's Word and open to Acts chapter 20. Acts chapter 20. As we are getting to the end of this series on the church and what the Scriptures teach us about the nature of the church, the dignity, the beauty of the church, and God's concern for it. We're going to take this afternoon and next Sunday afternoon and examine this metaphor that we see over and over in the Scriptures of the people of God as God's flock, as the sheep of his pasture. And so we're going to consider the the church as the the flock of God and today coordinating very well with part of what we heard this morning as well as last Sunday we're going to look specifically at the roles and duties of the shepherds of God's flock.

So Acts chapter 20 and I will read beginning in verse 17. From Miletus he sent, and he being Paul, to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church. And when they had come to them, he said to them, "'You know from The first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I always lived among you, serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials, which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews. How I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews and also to Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And see, now I go bound in the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulations await me, but none of these things move me, nor do I count my life dear to myself, So that I may finish my race with joy and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

And indeed now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God will see my face no more. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the Church of God by which he purchased or sorry which he purchased with his own blood for this I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves, men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this passage of scripture. Thank you for this picture you have given in your word that the people that you have called out and made your own are your sheep. They are your little flock. The flock that you care for, that you feed, that you love, and that you have given into the hands of under-shepherds here on earth.

As we consider these things, Lord, we pray your help. May you be at work in correcting misapprehensions we may have. Help us, Lord, to have a true and correct understanding of these things and of the duties that you call your shepherds to. And may we rejoice that you have given these gifts to your people. Amen.

So as I said, we're going to be looking at this picture that we see throughout Scripture of the church as the flock of God. And Paul, when he is here meeting with these Ephesian elders, this passage is very instructive for us on what it means for elders in the church to be shepherds of God's people. Paul urges the Ephesian elders here to take heed to themselves and to all the flock over which they have oversight and that they are to shepherd them or to pastor them. This passage is very instructive for us in the role of a pastor or elder and we see here that these terms of elder and overseer and pastor that we see throughout Scripture they're all three are used in this one passage. He's calling these men who are elders, and he says that the Holy Spirit has made you overseers or bishops, and you are to shepherd or pastor the flock.

That word for shepherd is the verb form of the word that we get the word pastor. So they are to be pastors over this flock. And so on the basis of this passage, we see that these are not three different offices, but really the same office and various functions or roles of that one office of the elder. And we see from other passages such as Ephesians 4 that we've referenced numerous times that these gifts, these men, these pastor teachers are gifts from God to his church. They are to be those who shepherd the flock that God has made his own.

And this image of the people of God as a flock, and the leaders as shepherds, as I said, will be our subject today and next Sunday. It's an interesting picture, because we generally don't have a high opinion of sheep, right? We look at sheep and that's about the dumbest animal God made, it seems like. But it's instructive for us because sheep need to be led or they are in danger of being slaughtered, of being torn apart and destroyed by the wild beasts. We heard that this morning.

It's dangerous to not be, or it's dangerous to be part of a church, but it's way more dangerous to be apart from the church because sheep need a shepherd. But this flock that God has in the world is an interesting flock because even the shepherds are also sheep. They're not a unique class in that sense. They're not a different species. They are sheep who have been raised up out of the flock and given this duty by the great chief shepherd to lead the rest of the flock.

And so it's a very interesting picture. And this picture of the flock to describe God's people is not new or unique to the New Testament, though we often see it most in the New Testament, it seems like. But that language of describing even Israel as God's flock seems to have really taken root in the time of David, which makes sense as he began his life as a shepherd before he was king. But even before then, It's interesting to note that God's method of preparing Moses to lead his people out of captivity was he sent him in the wilderness to tend sheep for 40 years. And so we have Moses, a prince out of Pharaoh's own household, sent to tend sheep, both preparing him for the greater work of shepherding God's people.

This image is used first, explicitly it seems, in Numbers 27-17, as far as I can tell, where Moses asks God to appoint a successor for him. It's the end of Moses' life and he wants God to clearly appoint a successor. He says that the successor needs to come along so that God's people, quote, may not be like sheep, which have no shepherd. And then later, as the Old Testament develops, the kings and the priests and the prophets are also identified as shepherds over the sheep of Israel. And of course if you are familiar at all with your Old Testament you know that more often than not they failed in their duty as shepherds.

And this failure, this generation after generation of failure culminates really in Ezekiel, in Ezekiel chapter 34 where God is so enraged at the mistreatment of his people of his flock at the hands of his under shepherds that he swears in verse in chapter 34 he says As surely as I live declares the Lord God, because my flock lacks a shepherd, and has become prey and food for every wild beast, because my shepherds did not search for my flock, but fed themselves instead. Therefore you shepherds hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord God says, I am against the shepherds, and I will demand from them my flock and remove them from tending the flock so that they can no longer feed themselves. I will deliver my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them." God loves his flock, and he has entrusted their care, humanly speaking, into the hands of men who are to serve as undershepherds. And God is not disinterested in how these men care for his people.

He will require his flock from them. And he expects that his sheep will have been well cared for. And those shepherds who do not fulfill their duties will find God to be their enemy How terrifying of a sentence is it to hear from the mouth of God I am against you shepherds And so if these are the stakes for the shepherds of God's flock, we must be diligent to understand what the duties and roles are that God expects his shepherds to fulfill. We must understand these things. And so we're going to look today at the duties of God's shepherds, the duties of the shepherds of God's flock.

And first I want us to consider their duties toward God and then secondly their duties toward the flock. So first, their duties toward God. The starting point of any shepherd's duty toward God is firstly he must be qualified to be a shepherd. That is the starting point. He must be qualified.

First Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1 are the passages which most clearly explicate the standards for an elder. Now we don't have time to go through each one of these qualifications individually, But suffice it to say that the qualifications given in 1st Timothy 3 and Titus 1 boil down to that the elder, the shepherd of God's people, must be a mature Christian man that others in the flock can look up to. He must be a mature Christian man who is an example to the flock. Now these standards that are laid out are not insurmountable obstacles that only a handful of men can ever fulfill. Now yes, there are going to be men who will not reach these standards, and that is right.

But these standards are really character traits largely, and they are commanded to all of God's people in other passages, all God's people are commanded to be sober-minded. All of God's people are commanded to have their families in a well-running order, to have their children in submission. And so the point isn't that an elder has to be some kind of a super Christian in a class all to himself, but that he must be a mature believer who is an example to the church. And note that despite the insanity of the world today and regarding pronouns and gender, I am exclusively saying he. The most basic foundation of an elder's qualification is that he must be a he.

It must be a man out of the church. I hope this is incredibly basic for us, but it must be repeated and reaffirmed that only men are called to be elders and shepherds of God's church. It is a duty reserved to the office, or it is a duty reserved to men. The grammar of this passage makes it inescapable. The explicit commands elsewhere in the New Testament make it inescapable.

It's very difficult, for instance, for a woman to be the husband of one wife, no matter what the world may think. And when Paul says he does not allow a woman to exercise authority, he means what he says. And in reality, if we look at church history, there's been virtually no real debate about this until the last hundred years. Any group that is even remotely Orthodox in their theology has affirmed this from the beginning of the Church and even before the beginning of the New Covenant as we look back to the roles of the priests and prophets in the Old Covenant. Now there were a handful of Protestant groups that ordained women as evangelists or elders, and they were incorrectly distinguishing between elders and pastors.

But there were a few groups as early as the late 1800s that would ordain women to these roles. But the real push for full-fledged egalitarianism, where all sex distinctions are abandoned in church leadership, that really began in the middle of the 1900s. And by the time you get to the 70s and 80s, most mainline denominations had utterly capitulated to the spirit of the age on these things. But regardless of whether or not we are a minority among professing Christians or not, it does not change what the scriptures clearly say. If we are going to be Christians and we are going to say that we believe this book, we must affirm that this is a duty and an office reserved to men.

And not just any man, but a man who is qualified, meeting these character traits that scripture lays out for us. And so we see that the first duty of a shepherd toward God is that he must be a qualified man, a mature Christian man who can be an example to the flock of God. Secondly, he must be diligent to maintain his qualification. Just as not every man is qualified because he doesn't meet the standards. A qualified man can lose his status as qualified if he falls into serious sin or is no longer doing his duty in meeting these obligations.

An elder must be diligent in keeping watch over himself and living in accord with these standards. He must watch and make sure that there is not any area in his heart or in his life or in his practice or in his speech that's beginning to slip. He must say with Calvin, my heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely because it is heartfelt love and trust in God which will enable the pastor to maintain his qualified status. That is the core and starting point of it all. Is that zeal for God still there?

That is the starting point of all these qualifications because if this heart attitude of love and zeal towards God is maintained, it is far easier to maintain the moral and character qualifications. And it is often through this failure to maintain these qualifications that God is blasphemed by unbelievers as they see the hypocrisy in the pulpits of God's churches. And we must avoid that. And this heartfelt zeal for God, this love from the heart for Christ, is also what will guard against preaching merely becoming lecturing. The work of study, of digging in and rigorously picking apart God's Word in order to better understand it and better explain it to God's people, that can very easily become a mere academic exercise.

It can merely become, I'm studying a textbook. But the Bible is not a textbook, and God did not call his shepherds merely to be scholars. They should be scholars, they should be theologians, But they're not just that. A pastor is not just a theologian, he is more than a theologian. And this is both for his own benefit as a son of God, as well as for the benefit of his flock.

If his preaching and his teaching just becomes rote and the recitation of research papers from the pulpit, the people will not be fed the way they need to be fed. In his book, The Reformed Pastor Richard Baxter writes, preach to yourselves the sermons which you study before you preach them to others. When your minds are in a holy, heavenly frame, your people are likely to partake of the fruits of it. Your prayers and praises and doctrines will be sweet and heavenly to them. They will likely feel when you have been much with God that which is most on your heart is like to be most in their ears.

In other words, don't let your preaching ever become mere information. It's not just that. It's calling people and drawing them in and showing them the beauty of Christ and saying this is the way to go Follow him follow me as I follow him It's not just communicating information and Speaking of study thirdly He must maintain good doctrine He must maintain good doctrine. First Timothy 4.16 says, take heed to yourself, Paul writing to Timothy, take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you." The shepherd of God's flock must have a good grasp of theology and the doctrines presented in scripture.

Part of being a mature Christian man who can be an example is that he is not a theological novice tossed about by every wind of doctrine. He must understand and believe the Bible and he must not be one who is prone to hear something for the first time and think it sounds good and immediately adopts a position. He must study, carefully study, and come to his own convictions and really understand what God is teaching in His Word. He must keep watch over His life and His doctrine. Now this isn't to say that a pastor cannot ever re-evaluate his theology or change his beliefs, but it must not be a flippant thing.

It is a very serious thing when any of us change our theology. And it's more serious the more central the doctrine becomes. And it's especially serious when it's the pastor who changes his doctrine. It is not good for a flock to hear every few years to hear from their shepherd saying, what I fed you years ago was wrong. That's not good for the sheep.

So he must maintain good doctrine. Fourthly, he must continually be in private prayer. He must continually be in private prayer. Acts chapter 6 verse 4, the Apostles said, but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. The apostles gave this church in Jerusalem the authority to select really what were the first deacons in the church so that they as elders in the church would not be distracted from their primary works of prayer and the ministry of the Word, which I take to be both the study and the proclamation of Scripture.

So this prayer, prayer generally for the pastor is both a public and a private duty. He prays publicly, He prays for his people, he prays with his people, but it is also a private duty. And this actually feeds the other. Private prayer will feed public prayer. If private prayer is lacking, then public prayer will suffer.

If the pastor lives a prayerless life at home, his preaching will suffer. His life will suffer. If he is lacking communion with God, How can he hope to maintain his status as a man qualified to shepherd God's Church? And what does this this kind of prayerlessness indicate? What would that indicate of this shepherd's heart?

Well, it reveals a heart of self-sufficiency. That is really what we see when we are prayerless. We are saying, I don't need God's help. How dangerous is that for the shepherd of God's flock to say, I don't need your help God? Rather than lamenting with the Apostles when they considered the work of ministry, when they lamented who is sufficient for these things, The prayerless pastor says, I'm sufficient for it.

No, you aren't. No, none of us are. No man is. How can you shepherd God's people when you spend no time with Him? How can a shepherd appeal to God on their behalf and plead for their souls if he never prays?

Prayer is essential and it is an essential tool given to the pastor of God's people. So these are the duties of a shepherd toward God. He must be qualified, he must be diligent to maintain his qualification, he must maintain good doctrine, and he must be continually in private prayer. Now there are more that we could add, but we will suffice at those four. Now to the shepherd's duties toward the flock.

The shepherd's duties toward the flock. Firstly, building off of the last of those duties toward God, he must pray for and with the flock publicly and with the sheep privately. He must pray for and with the flock publicly and corporately and with the sheep individually and privately. Again, the Apostle said, we will give ourselves continually to prayer, continually to prayer. And this is not limited only to personal prayer at home.

The minister of God, the shepherd of God's flock, is also an example to the sheep of how to pray. And in his prayers, whether they be Sunday morning or midweek service or wherever they may be, He is giving them an example of how to pray, and He is also demonstrating His love for the sheep as He is publicly bringing them before the throne of grace. Not only does he do this publicly but also personally and privately. The shepherd must go to the sheep individually and in his personal care for their souls he prays for and with the sheep. The flock should not wonder if their pastor prays for them.

They should know it because they hear it every Sunday morning. And they should know it because they've heard it as he's met with them privately. They know their pastor prays for them and intercedes on their behalf to the great chief shepherd because they have seen it firsthand. And they should see that their shepherd loves them and cares for them both physically and spiritually because they hear the prayers of their pastor, pouring out their cares and concerns to God on their behalf. So he must pray for and with the sheep.

Secondly, he must preach the Word. He must preach the Word. Second Timothy 4, 2, preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all lung suffering and teaching. The shepherds of God's flock have the duty to publicly preach God's Word. This is the primary ministry of the Word that we saw in Acts chapter 6.

The public, regular preaching of God's Word to God's people is the main way that God, through his under-shepherds, feeds the flock with the food that he gives them from heaven. It is through the regular, consistent preaching of God's Word in the gathered church that God feeds his sheep. And they are to preach God's Word. God's Word is truth. Jesus himself said, your word is truth.

They are not merely to become political pundits or philosophers giving their speculation or comedians trying to make you laugh and have a good time. They are to preach God's Word. I'm not opposed to there being politics or philosophy or comedy in a sermon. There are times that I believe there are that it is appropriate for those things in some measure, but they all, our politics, our philosophy, and even our humor must be grounded in God's word. And when a pastor engages in any of these things, it must flow from his study and preaching of scripture.

It is all grounded in Scripture. The pastor does not preach himself. He does not preach worldly philosophy. He does not preach on whatever the latest movie trend is or any of this silliness. He preaches the Word of God and tells his people, repent and believe and obey it.

That is his goal and his purpose when he comes into the pulpit. In season and out of season, Paul tells Timothy, that seems to be pretty comprehensive. Any point in time you must be ready and willing and able to bring God's Word to bear to his people when they want to hear it and when they don't want to hear it. And again it's not just the communication of information, rather this preaching and teaching ministry is intended to draw out the heart of the hearer and to shape them and mold them so that they become like their savior. The goal is not just so that you get more theological information, but so that you become conformed to the image of Christ.

That is the goal of preaching. And that will look different. Different men will do it differently, and it will be done in different different contexts and when I say preach the word I'm also including bringing the word to bear privately as well. Some need to be corrected, some need to be admonished, Some need to be encouraged. The sheep are in all kinds of different circumstances.

But whatever their circumstance is, what they need is found in God's Word. And That's why God's word must be preached. So he must preach the word. Third, he must wield the keys of the kingdom. He must wield the keys of the kingdom.

Now, the keys of the kingdom, which I absolutely do not have time to get into fully, seem to be best understood as symbols of authority that were given to the apostles and carry on to be a picture of the authority given to elders in the church. And there are two primary aspects of the keys that I am thinking of right now. Firstly, the keys are used through the right administration of the sacraments, or ordinances if you prefer that term. The right administration of the sacraments, that is given to the elders and to those they delegate if necessary. This is a function of the keys of the kingdom of binding and loosing on earth what has already been bound and loosed in heaven.

So the administration of baptism and the giving of the Lord's Supper, this is given to the shepherds as a means of feeding God's flock and in growing them in grace and encouraging them to follow Christ. Secondly, the shepherds use the keys of the kingdom by the correct application of church discipline. And this spreads the whole gamut from the initial gentle confrontation to the outright excommunication of the apostate from the church. The elder must protect the flock and one of the most important weapons in his duty to defend the flock is the use of the keys to, in a sense, lock the doors to those who have shown themselves to be false believers and call them to repent and put their trust in Jesus. So they must wield the keys of the kingdom through right administration of the sacraments and the correct application of discipline.

Fourthly, he must privately counsel and build up the sheep. As vital and necessary as the public proclamation of Scripture is, this never exhausts the needs of God's people. It never meets every need. It never fulfills all that the people need to hear from their shepherds. The people often need more particular application and counsel and oftentimes rebuke and correction, which can best be done personally and privately.

And a shepherd who knows his sheep, a shepherd who has not only seen the flock as a whole, but has gotten in there, and as one writer put it, he has felt the wool of the sheep and knows them by name. He is able to go to each one specifically and encourage them and exhort them as they truly need. This is the main work of oversight. This is the idea of being an overseer. They are watching out and on guard for the flock generally, but also each sheep personally.

It's very hard to oversee people and keep watch on their spiritual state if you are never interacting with them personally and pursuing them regarding the state of their souls. And this seems to be indicated as a role that Paul had here in Acts 20 verse 20 where he said he kept nothing back what was helpful but proclaimed it to you and taught you publicly and from house to house. And I think what he's getting at there is the public ministry, preaching to the gathered people, but also house to house. I don't think he's referring to house churches, but going to the homes of individual believers and encouraging them and teaching them in their homes privately. He visited them and instructed them apart from the local church, apart from the gathered body.

He brought the Word of God to bear on them, not only in public, but also in private. And this really must spring from a willingness to do this work. They must want to do this. As Peter says, 1 Peter 5, Peter writing to the under shepherds, shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers not by compulsion but willingly. This should be something that a shepherd desires to do, this personal work of overseeing the people.

He isn't in this role, in this position merely to gratify himself but to serve God and God's people. Now There are many other things that we could get into and other duties that we could tease out of scripture, but I believe these eight duties really sum up the work and role of a pastor. He must, in his duties toward God, be qualified, maintain his qualification, maintain good doctrine, and be continually in private prayer. And in his duties toward the flock he must be praying with and for his people. He must be in prayer with them and for them.

He must preach the word. He must wield the keys of the kingdom, and he must privately counsel and build up the sheep." I think these really capture the essence of what it means to be a shepherd. And so, In conclusion, I want to address three groups of people. Firstly, to our elders directly here. Thank you for taking on this work.

Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I praise God for you and for your willingness to fulfill these duties. As a church we are blessed to have three men who do these things and with God's help they do them well and we should thank God for that. But remember that these duties are always your standing obligation.

Do not think that just because you are doing well means you always will. Do not grow weary. And when you do grow weary, look to Christ as your great chief shepherd who can help you and gives you grace. Secondly, to those who desire this work, those who desire to be an elder, to be a shepherd over God's flock, keep in mind these duties that you say you are aspiring to. Do you only want to be the one in the pulpit on Sunday mornings?

Or are you really wanting to shepherd God's people? Paul tells us if you desire this work, it is a good thing. It is a noble thing to desire this office and this duty. It's a good thing. But James also says, let not many of you become teachers because you will receive a stricter judgment.

And the writer to the Hebrews says that those who rule over the church will give an account for the souls that God has entrusted to their care. And don't forget what God said to those shepherds in Ezekiel 34, because of their mistreatment of the sheep, God has become their enemy. It is a good and glorious thing to aspire to this work, but it is also a serious and holy thing, not something to be entered into lightly or flippantly. Examine yourself, see if you are truly called to this work, and proceed slowly and prayerfully, fearing God. And lastly, to the whole church, love your shepherds, pray for them, do good to them, submit to them as is appropriate as Christ's under shepherds, help them do this work with joy and not with grief with grief so that their work is not unprofitable to you and we'll look at that more next week as we consider the duties of the flock.

Let's pray together. Father we thank you for your word. Thank you that you have given these gifts to your people. The gift of pastor teachers. The gifts of men to be shepherds over your own sheepfold.

Thank you Lord that you have not left us as individual sheep to be scattered and devoured but you gather us into a body and you appoint men to lead. Help us Lord to be diligent to obey you and to submit to them and Lord may you give grace to our shepherds that they may continue to shepherd well and that in all of it Christ may be glorified in this church and among those who are part of it and in this community and Lord wherever your people meet around this world may you be glorified through shepherds who shepherd well and glorify Christ in their work. In his name we pray, amen. We are dismissed although Alan said if we have an all hands on deck to help clean up, the cleanup crew is not here today. So if we jump on that, that'd be great.

Until next Sunday, we are dismissed.