Now if you have a Bible that we invite you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 13 this evening we're verses 18 and 19. We've been in a portion at the end of the book about Christian leadership having spoken of Christ the apostle and high priest the great shepherd of the sheep the true leader of God's people he does a point under shepherds among his people and we've seen already some things that he said we're going to see another thing tonight. We've already seen in verse 7 how we relate to our prior or past spiritual leaders who've gone on to glory and how we relate to our present spiritual leaders in verse 17 we're on the one hand remember those who've gone on and remember them and imitate their faith. Last week we saw verse 17 now among your present spiritual leaders submit yourselves to them and let it be a joy for them to serve you and shepherd you and that they might not have to groan in their leadership of you.
And in speaking of our responsibilities to our spiritual leaders he reminds us of the nature of their ministry to us. This is the ministry of spiritual leaders elders and pastors it's a ministry of teaching and governing. They taught us the word with words and by deed he said it for 17 they spoke the word of God to us they said an example they also govern us for 17 they keep watch over our souls as those who will give an account to God spiritual leaders should be interested in your spiritual well-being. Now the writer says at verses 18 and 19 I want you to not only listen to the word of God from them and not only imitate their faith in God and not only submit yourself to them but I want you to pray for them.
So that's what we're thinking about this evening praying for our spiritual leaders. Let me invite you to consider this from Hebrews chapter 13 verses 18 and 19 this is the holy word of God. Pray for us. For we are sure that we have a clear conscience desiring to act honorably in all things.
I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner. Amen. This is God's word. Let's pray.
Let's pray for our Father and have this is your word and it has instruction for us and we pray that you would then teach us by it but not just inform us but transform us. We ask that we would be more like our Lord Jesus and all his humility and his integrity and his prayerfulness and his loving care for us. Help us to be more like him in Jesus name I pray. Amen.
Well the writer says pray for us and then he says here's what we need to pray about. He tells us what we should do and in doing so he tells us what ought to be important to us in our spiritual leaders. I mean what he thinks is important for pastors important enough for you to pray about these things for them. He wants you to know what's on his heart and he wants you to be on your heart and in your prayers and my prayers.
And so in the passage we learn three things at least about faithful pastors even as we learn how we ought to pray for them. And so let's take it that way. What do we learn? We learn about first pastoral humility by the very fact that he says pray for us.
And we also learn about pastoral integrity. He says we need you to pray for us concerning our godliness. And then we learn about pastoral proximity that is he wants them to pray for him because he wants to be reunited with them because he cares about being with his people. And so let's think about these three things first pastoral humility your spiritual leaders need you to pray for them.
Verse 18 it's just a simple phrase pray for us. Pray for us because pastors are people too. You can write that one down pastors are people too. They are not leaders are not gods.
They are not lords. They are not to attempt to be. They are not all sufficient for all things. We have many weaknesses.
And Jesus always lives to make intercession for us. This is our hope. He's always praying, interceding ministering mediating God's grace to his people for our salvation, our sanctification and for the building up of his church. But not only do we need Jesus to do what he does for us.
Jesus says we also need to appeal to God and intercede as well. Because our leaders are made of the same stuff as those we serve. We all have continuing sins and weaknesses, limitations, blind spots and needs of all kinds just like everybody else. And God's people don't always believe that.
Some who know me well might have no trouble at all believing in the weaknesses of pastors. But others think sometimes much too highly of their spiritual leaders and their progress and their powers. And because of that they don't pray for them. They just assume, honor, presume upon how well their pastor is doing and what kind of pastor they had.
I read a humorous description of a pastor some time ago called the perfect pastor. The perfect pastor preaches exactly 10 minutes, it said. And he condemns sin roundly but never hurts anybody's feelings. And he works from 8 a.m.
until midnight and is always also the church janitor. And the perfect pastor makes 40 months a week and he gives 30 of it to the church. And he's 29-year-old with 40 years of experience. And he makes 10 home visits a day and is always in his office to be handy when needed.
He never misses any meeting of the church organization but is always busy evangelizing the un-church. And the perfect pastor is talented, gifted, scholarly, practical, popular, compassionate, understanding patient, level-headed, dependable, loving, caring, meet, organized cheerful and above all humble. Well, there you go. You obviously have the perfect pastor.
No, you don't. Right? Not by a long shot. And speaking for myself and I know I can speak for Zach of the elders too.
We're in way over our head. We don't have all the answers that are needed to leave the local church. I didn't write the Bible. I'm just doing what I can with the Lord's help to try to understand it, explain it and apply it.
I'm certainly not infallible in that. I don't know enough to guide people through all the various complex personal problems that they have. And sometimes all I do know to do for you is to say, Lord, help, Lord, have mercy. Lord, rescue your people.
But sometimes I'm too obtuse or too proud or too lazy even to do that. Do you have trouble praying? You're in good company. Charles Spurgeon, the famous Baptist pastor with a congregation of thousands in the 1800s once wrote this about his own struggles.
I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than I do anything else. This was one of the most respected and revered pastors in the history of the church and was known for his praying and his congregations. He preached over 100 sermons on prayer and he actually prayed. He still felt like he didn't quite get it.
So I'd ask you, do you have trouble praying? What should we do when we have trouble praying? A woman went to Andrew Murray with a problem of feeling like she couldn't pray. She said to her, why then do you not try this?
As you go into your inner chamber, however cold and dark your heart may be, do not try in your own might to force yourself into the right attitude. Bow before him and tell him that he sees in what a sad state you are and that your only hope is in him. Trust in him with a child like trust to have mercy upon you and wait upon him and in such a trust you are in a right relation to him. You have nothing.
He has everything. You see, he knows. He who always lives to intercede for you can help you pray, but we can't pretend and just go, or we'll just don't go in through the motions. Now let me ask you, do you not pray because you think it doesn't matter?
Well, if that's the way we think we'd be wrong. It matters. The writer thinks it matters. He believes in the sovereignty of God and yet he prays.
He believes Jesus always lives to intercede for his people and yet he asks for prayer because our prayers matter. Doug Kelly in his encouraging little book, if God already knows why pray, says the reason we pray is because God has appointed prayers as the pride means by which God accomplishes his purposes. That's why we pray to a sovereign God. Why can't God, we just handle it all on his own?
He's sovereign after all because he uses our prayers and he has chosen to accomplish his work in this way. God's sovereign. Why can't God just do missions? Why send missionaries?
Because God has appointed the means of missionaries to accomplish his purposes. If God appoints the end, also appoints the means to the end. Whether that's faith in Christ, the preaching of the gospel or so also with prayer. So here's the point.
We have the privilege and the writer is telling us, embrace the privilege of participating with God in God's own ministry. He invites us to do so. He hears and he answers our prayer and he gets his work done this way. One of the qualifications of church leadership is we know that we don't deserve to be in it and we know that we're not in ourselves competent for it.
We know our only hope is Jesus and the only hope of God's people is Jesus and the only hope of the lost is Jesus and the only one who can build his church is Jesus. And so we covet the prayers of God's people for ourselves. That's pastoral humility. That's the first thing.
Second, notice his concern for pastoral integrity. He says pray for us, verse 18, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience desiring to act honorably in all things. So pray for us because we want to act and to continue to act honorably in all things. He's confessing here that as far as he knows his own heart, he's been teaching the truth and living a godly life worthy of example.
And his conscience is clear. The thing he confesses, he's done, he's actually asking prayer to continue doing. Pray for us that we would keep on acting honorably. And this is so important because until we're home to glory, there are many things that could cause us to stumble and fall.
I mean, every pastor like every Christian is prone to wander, Lord, I feel prone to leave the God I love. My heart will take and seal it for your courts above. We're all in danger, temptation from without, from the world, from the enemy, from within our indwelling sin. And so pray for me that I would keep on having a clear conscience and acting honorably.
Listen, I don't want to be a hypocrite. In front of you teaching things I don't believe or living contrary to what it is, I do believe. And I can tell you this, those who know me best will at times think he's got the word hypocrite right across his forehead. I mean, my wife, my children, my closest friends, the elders, if you know me well, I'm not all that I ought to be.
But you can pray and you could pray that we would do what we desire to do. We want the writers as we want to continue to act honorably grant that we would do so. Now, obviously for the writer, he was not engaged in a kind of public or scandalous sin that disqualified him for ministry. You can pray to that end for all of your pastors and elders and leaders here that we would not be like that.
And we've got to pray for them. We've got to pray for pastors with integrity and ask God to give them to us and keep them that way. And then when Stephenson was a boy who once remarked to his mother, mama, you can't be good without praying. Well, how do you know, Robert?
She asked because I tried. He answered. And that brings the mind the story about another little guy who had been sent to his room because he had been bad. And a short time later, he came out and said to his mother, I've been thinking about what I did and I said a prayer.
Well, that's fine, she said. If you ask God to make you good, he will help you. Oh, I didn't ask him to help me be good with either little boy. I asked him to help you put up with me.
Oh, goodness. Well, I'll pray that the Lord will help you continue to put up with me. But once you pray that the Lord would make me and all of your spiritual leaders more like himself, I mean, it's a sober incursion James has for us in chapter three. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
We all stumble, he says, in many ways. And if that's true, and it is, of course, how much more is your prayer necessary for us? You know, Jesus prayed in John 17 17, Jesus prayed to his father and for us, for all of us. He said Lord, sanctify them in the truth.
Your word is truth. I can think of no better prayer that you could one line for me. The Lord would sanctify me in his truth. That the Lord would make me more like himself.
That I would more and more love what he loves, more and more hate what he hates and do what he loves and not do what he hates. And so by his spirit, live in line of the truth. We need this. You know, early church father Gregory the Great said he was required by the necessity of his position to speak the highest things is compelled by the same necessity to exemplify the highest things.
And to that in prayer is the greatest gift that you could give me because my life doesn't always match my words. I speak lawfully and I act selfishly. And if the Apostle Paul needed prayer, I need your prayer. And if the other Hebrews needs your prayers, I need your prayers.
All of us do. The pressing me to the hour for leaders of all kinds. I mean, because it's 24 hour social media and because of exposés and because people are more easily known and their private scandalous sins are easily brought to light. We hear about people in positions of power or authority or leadership all the time.
People in Hollywood, people in news media, people in government and of course people in the church across the whole spectrum of churches, faithful churches and unfaithful churches. We hear about the destructive use of leadership and authority, people facing personal disgrace for the sins that they have committed bringing injury to their families and their marriage or their organization. It happens in God's church too. In fact, one of the commonest strategies in war is to do whatever you can to take out the officers on the opposing side.
Because if you can do that, you can introduce chaos and confusion and despondency into the ranks. And so it's unsurprising that the enemy of the church has a concerted strategy to take out leaders in God's churches and thereby introduce chaos and confusion and dejection and cynicism into the body of Christ. Because we are at war. Of course, some failures among God's people and God's pastors are recoverable.
Peter gives us all hope, all who are in church leadership. I mean, three times publicly, he denied Jesus to his face and then Jesus said, I want you to leave our church. And then as a leader in the church, he failed to live in line with the truth of the gospel by failing to eat with Gentiles out of fear of some Jews and Peter had to rebuke Peter publicly and to his face, read about that in Galatians. Yet Peter repented and continued to serve and gave us two letters found in the Bible before being crucified for the sake of Christ upside down.
Yet by contrast, of course, there's Judas who failed, was unrepented and was unrecoverable. Then you get that curious case in First Timothy 1, Hamanaeus and Alexander, prominent men in the church, they had to be handed over to Satan that they might not learn to blaspheme. And I just mentioned all these examples because I again plead with you, pray that our conscience would remain clear, that we would live and minister in ways that are honorable and honoring to the Lord. So there's this note about pastoral humility and about pastoral integrity and finally a note about pastoral proximity.
I mean, notice verse 19, I urge you the more earnestly to do this, in order that I may be restored to you the sooner. He's asking for prayer that the end result would be that they could be together again. We don't know where he is for sure. We don't know why he's away.
We don't know what's preventing him from getting back to them. He just says, you know what? I want to come and be with you with you is where I want to be. And it may be like the Apostle Paul at times he was imprisoned and he would pray that he would be released so he could be restored because he longed to be with the saints, as he says in Romans 15, so that by God's will I might come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company.
Pray that I can be delivered from unbelievers and restored to my people. And so what you see there is that local leaders, pastors, true shepherds, care about being with and among their people, knowing and being known, leaders who would miss you if you were gone. It's not a great stretch to point out the troubling practice of some churches having pastors who aren't even present with their people, churches who use video screens to broadcast services. And I don't mean video or audio to broadcast to nursery workers and parents who are temporarily out of the service or broadcasting to reach those who are sick or stuck at home or broadcasting with a goal of evangelizing others who might stumble upon the material.
I'm not saying any of that is bad and we do that here. But churches that are actually designed in such a way that you'll never meet the pastor because there's one pastor and a dozen sites and the pastor who preaches to you will never be in your local place. You'll never know him. He'll never know your name.
That's what we're talking about here. But the writer here says, I want to be with you. I want us to live together. Well, together.
This is what pastors should aspire to be and do. And of course, the best preachers we listen to, I mean, there's wonderful podcast material out there. I'm not discouraging you from listening to some of the greatest pastors and preachers there are in the world who will truly never know your name until heaven. Again, I listen to folks too because I need to be preached to and encouraged and taught.
So I'm not down on that either. But the best preachers you listen to are actually preaching to the people of God among whom they live and pastor. And and that's what we should be aiming for. For use of the great Augustine to his people for you, I am Bishop.
But with you, I am a Christian for you. I'm a bishop. But with you, I am a Christian. The first is an office accepted.
The second a grace received. One a danger, the other safety. If then I am blattered by far to be redeemed with you, then I am to be placed over you. I shall as the Lord commanded to be more completely your servant.
Oh, we need leaders more like that. You know, one of the visits to the continent in Europe by Charles Spurgeon, one of them he met an American minister who said, I've long wished to see you, Mr. Spurgeon. And to put one or two simple questions to you, in our country, there are many opinions as to the secret of your great influence.
Would you be good enough to give me your own point of view? And after a moment's pause, Spurgeon said, my people pray for me. I asked the same of you, but let us all remember as we close that we all fail in our prayerfulness. And we all fail in various ways in our personal humility and our personal integrity and our personal proximity in loving relationships.
But would you remember the humility of the good shepherd? He who humbled himself and became obedient even to the point of death, even death upon a cross for our sins. No greater humility than the good shepherd. And would you remember his personal exemplary integrity, without which he could not die for the sins of others, without which he would have had to die for his own lack of integrity, but he was full and complete in righteous integrity.
The best, most faithful shepherd you could ever have put your hope in him. And would you remember his pastoral proximity? Where he will never leave us, he will never forsake us. He died not just to pardon us, but to win us, to make us his own, and to take us to be where he is forever, because he actually loves his sheep personally.
Put your greatest hope in him, and then pray for us. Let's pray. Lord Grant, we would be more like you, and forgive the innumerable ways we fall short of your glory. And thank you, Lord Jesus, that you don't turn away your face and shame, but you always live to intercede for us, and you are able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God for you.
So we ask that you would shepherd this flock and receive all the praise in your name. Amen.