Like a viper from the bushes, the Amalek attacked Israel. The shores had not yet washed clean of Pharoah’s army, nor had the people reached Sinai, before new enemies emerged: “Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim” (Exodus 17:8).

Desperate circumstance made soldiers of slaves. Moses, their commander and chief, instructed Joshua to gather men and march into battle. Moses would take a different route, fight on a different front: “Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand” (Exodus 17:9).

So it happened. “Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed” (Exodus 17:10–11). A strange way to win or lose a battle. The lives of men suspended in midair with Moses’s staff. Held high, Israel aggressed. As hands drooped, Amalek played havoc. The prophet learned that gravity is an unrelenting foe: “Moses’ hands grew weary” (Exodus 17:12).

Pastors too know such weariness — this burn of holding their arms up in intercession for God’s people. Almost tireless, see them upon the hill, day in day out, month in month out, year in year out. Seasons change, but there they are upon the peak. Sometimes it all seems useless. Sometimes it is thankless. The sunbeams of complaints beat upon the brow; the sorrows of their people wear on the spirit. Gravity, in ministry, is an unrelenting foe.

Years pass. Arms droop. Just a few years, and some pastors have dropped them altogether. Blessed then, is the pastor who has Aaron and Hur with him:

Moses’s hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. (Exodus 17:12–13)

The proverb is here embodied: “Though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him — a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12). Blessed is the man who stands with brother elders at his side, but abundantly blessed is he who has a whole church holding up his arms.

How to Love Your Pastor

Before becoming one, I rarely asked, How do I best care for my pastors? How can I be a blessing to them, refresh them, uphold their arms? My pastors always seemed to have it together. I needed their help, it seemed, on a one-way street. But Scripture does not show it to be so. Drawing from John Owen’s short but excellent little book Duties of Christian Fellowship, consider a few ways a flock cares well for their shepherd.

1. Esteem Them

Some families find it easy to spend the car ride home from church doing little more than criticizing the pastor and his sermon. I stand convicted overhearing Charles Spurgeon,

Filled with the same spirit of contrariety, the men of this world still depreciate the ministers whom God sends them and profess that they would gladly listen if different preachers could be found. Nothing can please them, their cavils are dealt out with heedless universality. Cephas is too blunt, Apollos is too flowery, Paul is too argumentative, Timothy is too young, James is too severe, John is too gentle. (Eclectic Preachers)

How important, then, to have the primary description of a flock’s relationship to its pastors be one of esteem.

Overhear the apostle enjoin what many a humble pastor might blush to mention: “We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work” (1 Thessalonians 5:12–13). Esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Does this describe you? Or for that to happen, does the pastor need to have generational giftings and fit your preferences?

2. Imitate Them

Consider one way the author of Hebrews calls us to esteem them: “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). Imitation is the sincerest form of esteem.

Are your pastors especially humble, careful with their words, fearless in adversity, tender to the wayward, deeply knowledgeable of the Scriptures, happy in Christ, constant in prayer, God-fearing fathers, husbands, leaders, evangelists? What in their lives of faith do you imitate in yours? Consider the outcome of their lives and imitate them. And tell them you are doing so.

John Owen calls Christians to cover their pastor’s weaknesses in love, recognizing that their teachers’ lives are “a means of grace from God provided as a relief for them when under temptation, and an encouragement to holiness, zeal, meekness and self-denial” (19). Are you neglecting this example for your faith — the pastors’ lives — whose feet, though made of clay, support a life above reproach? In a hero-less world, are your pastors a model you look to regularly?

3. Pray for Them

How much do you pray for your pastors?

If some spent as much time praying for their pastors as they did spotlighting their weaknesses, they might not have them anymore. The question stands, “Is it realized that any perceived weakness in the pastor’s ministry may be due to the prayerlessness of the church?” (Duties, 22).

Heaven will reveal how much a pastor was upheld by the prayers of his people (or not). You may be down on the field of battle with Joshua, but if you really care to uphold his arms upon the hill — pray for him. May your prayers be stones for him to sit upon.

It has been said of Spurgeon that when asked about his great success in ministry, he remarked simply, “My people pray for me.” And on another occasion, he brought visitors down to the “boiler room” of the church, the place that gave it power and heat. He opened the door, and the visitors beheld hundreds praying before the service started.

“Do you pray for your pastor to be kept by Jesus, to be upheld and satisfied in Jesus?”

Do you pray for your pastors to be kept by Jesus, to be upheld and satisfied in Jesus? And do you pray with your pastors, that souls be saved to Jesus and the church matured for Jesus?

4. Stand by Them

May it never be the anxious thought of your pastors’ minds: Where are they?

Paul was left to ask this question, sending the sad report to Timothy: “At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them!” (2 Timothy 4:16).

Do you leave your pastors to charge in alone? Owen remarks, “When a captain, advancing against danger, looks back expecting to see his soldiers with him but finds that they have run away, he is greatly betrayed and forced into an impossible position by his enemies” (28).

How different is it to have or be a church full of Onesiphoruses? Paul reports,

May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he searched for me earnestly and found me — may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day! — and you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus. (2 Timothy 1:16–18)

We can hear the gratitude spattering from Paul’s pen. Pastors are men who grow weary like the rest of us — even young pastors run and grow tired. They receive more opposition, criticism, and slander than the normal churchman. Beyond this, shepherds accept invitations into all the bitter things of the church — adulteries, betrayals, deaths, and divisions. Pastoring is a good and hard work. They stand and contest with demonic bears and lions for their sheep’s sake — will the church not stand with them?

How might you support your pastors, help them, encourage them, defend them? Resist the world’s consumer mindset and take responsibility to help nurture the flock — disciple, serve, volunteer. Remember, they equip you for the work of ministry and will be mightily encouraged to see you doing it (Ephesians 4:13).

5. Help Them Love You

A final way to care for your pastors is to help them care for your soul.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

“Following your shepherd’s lead is to your own advantage. Happy pastors pastor better.”

A wise flock wants its shepherds to lead with joy. As they seek to shepherd you, follow their lead to Jesus, be ready to be persuaded by their teaching, submit to their guidance as far as Scripture allows. Do so readily, eagerly, thankfully that they might cheerfully discharge their eternal duty of caring for your immortal soul (for which they will give an account).

Following your shepherds’ lead is to your own advantage. Happy pastors pastor better. If a plurality of pastors is met with mostly antagonism, indifference, or distrust, the flock does them no favors to pastor as God would have them — “exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you” (1 Peter 5:2–3).

So esteem your pastors highly in the Lord, imitate them, pray for them, stand by them in trials, join them in the work of ministry, and be eager to submit to their direction. In so doing, you will sit them down upon the Rock, hold up their arms, and help them to serve your soul more of Jesus. And by God’s grace, you will defeat the Amaleks of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Persist in this, that we may all have a good report to give to the Master on that day — pastors for how they shepherded, and sheep for how they followed.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back! On Monday we looked at whether or not life has morally neutral areas — those gray areas, areas in life where we make decisions that are not necessarily sinful or holy. And in that first episode of the week, APJ 1846, Pastor John defined sin for us. He defined sin with Romans 3:23, saying, “Sin is first the disposition of the human heart to prefer human glory — especially self-glory — over God’s glory.” We exchange God’s glory for something we prefer more. We sin by exchanging the glory of God with another glory. That’s verse 23. Then verse 24 gives the solution to this sin, that we must be “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24).

This pair of glorious verses, Romans 3:23–24 — one verse defining sin, the other defining God’s response to that sin — holds the key to how we become unshakable people in this world. Those verses are, according to Pastor John, “more important than ten thousand books written by man to help you solve your problems.” So much so, he says, “If you build your life on these two verses, make them the foundation of your life, you will be strong and stable in a hundred crises” of life. That’s the bold testimony of John Piper, who makes those very claims in today’s sermon clip, a clip from a 1999 sermon. Here’s Pastor John to explain.

Verse 23 describes the universal need of every human being. And verse 24 gives the all-sufficient remedy for that need. These two verses are more important than ten thousand books written by man about how to solve your problems and make your future better. These are the words of God through the apostle Paul, and they tell us about our true condition, and they tell us about what God has done to remedy that condition.

Gospel Gravity

If you will build your life on these two verses, if you’ll make them the foundation of your life, you will be strong and stable in a hundred crises. If you will put these verses and the truth of them at the center of your life, like the sun at the center of the planets of the solar system of your life, then this truth will hold the orbiting planets of all the concerns and aspects of your life in place.

But if you allow this truth of Romans 3:23–24 to begin to marginalize and slip out to the rim — say, where Neptune and Pluto are out there — you know what would happen. If the sun moved from the center to the periphery of the solar system, everything would be destroyed. Everything would be in chaos. Everything would be confusion and perplexity and weakness, which is why so many professing Christians coast and amble through life wondering why their lives are so strangely perplexed, so out of sync, and out of kilter, and out of order, and nothing seems to be working right.

It’s because the truth of this magnificent gospel, which I’m going to try to articulate, is not at the center anymore. It’s not the sun that’s holding everything in place. It doesn’t have the weight of gravity to pull all things. Something else is at the center. You should be asking yourself right now, “What’s that in my life? Something really grips me in my life, something I come back to again and again and again. I go there in the morning, and I go there at noon, and I go there at night, and it pulls on me. What is it?”

Lacking the Glory of God

Verse 23 says that the universal need in the world of every person has to do with sin. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). No exceptions. There’s no distinction. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We saw that from Romans 1:18–3:20.

And now he tells us a little something about this condition by saying, “If you’ve sinned, your present condition is that you are now falling short of the glory of God.” Literally, the word is “you are now lacking the glory of God.” What does that mean? “All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God.” Does that mean that we were supposed to be as glorious as God, and we fell short and didn’t arrive at that divine glory, and so we have fallen short? I don’t think that’s what it means.

You weren’t designed to be as glorious as God. The best way to put meat on the bones of this simple verse is to go back to Romans 1, look at the discussion of glory in the context of sin, and see what a lacking might mean in Romans. So if you notice in Romans 1:18, Paul said they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Everybody in the world is a truth-suppressor until God gets ahold of us. We suppress the truth in our unrighteousness. And then look at verse 23: “[They] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (Romans 1:23). In verse 28: “They disapproved of having God in their knowledge” — that’s a literal translation. “They disapproved of having God in their knowledge.”

So, the picture you get is that sin is a failure to embrace the glory of God and God himself as our highest treasure and make him the center and foundation and supreme value of our lives, and thus to exchange that glory for some other treasure in this world, and thus lack that glory as our treasure, and thus bring great dishonor upon God.

“Sin is mainly about God; it’s not mainly about hurting people.”

That’s what sin is and does. Sin is mainly about God; it’s not mainly about hurting people. Sin hurts people. It’ll hurt you in the end. But it’s not mainly about hurting people. It’s mainly about God and trading, bartering, throwing away his supreme value and glory in order that we might put something else at the center, and in the bank, and in the treasury of our lives that we love, and we lean on, and we find satisfaction in. And thus, he is belittled and despised, sometimes wittingly and sometimes unwittingly — the same effect in both cases.

Great Guilt

Now that’s a great guilt. The reason it’s a great guilt is because God created this universe, the whole universe, to display his glory so that we might see it, and value it, and love it, and enjoy it and reflect it in the world. That’s why the universe and you were created. It should not therefore be surprising to us that the world will go haywire when the world is in rebellion against the design of the world.

If God designed the world, according to Isaiah 43:7, to display his glory, and you are choosing to dispense with his glory to put something else at the center of your life and love it, and live for it, and think about it, and dwell on it, and value it, it’s not surprising that the design of God for a beautiful, holistic world would be destroyed in your life. There is dysfunction and chaos and misery all over the world because the whole world is in rebellion against valuing the glory of God above all things. That’s why the world and your life is in the condition that it’s in.

“There is dysfunction and chaos and misery all over the world because the whole world is in rebellion.”

Sin is contemplating God as the supreme value and rejecting him as the supreme value, and thus exchanging the glory of God for some kind of substitute image (think of what it is), and thus lacking the glory, and thus dishonoring the glory of God. And that is a great guilt. And that’s the universal condition of humankind in verse 23. It’s a massive problem now that we have.

Great Turn

And the problem is, since we’ve all done this, how can we get right with God when we have so belittled him? And that’s what verse 24 is about. This verse is so rich. A great turn has come in Romans 3:21: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.” Some great event has happened.

“Now.” Do you hear that word now? “But now,” some great event has happened, and something new is happening in the world. No other religion knows of this great now, because it’s the now of the arrival of Jesus Christ and the redemption that is in him. So let’s read verse 24: “And [all] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24).

[Better is] the day of death than the day of birth.

I realize that’s an abrupt way to begin an article, but that’s how the Preacher begins Ecclesiastes 7. No easing in; he just pushes us into the deep end of the existential pool. So, here we are. What do you think about the Preacher’s statement? Do you agree with him?

The statement becomes more disturbing when we realize that the Preacher isn’t talking about our deaths, but about the deaths of people we know and love — deaths we experience as losses. He’s talking about the deaths of our grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, children, extended family members, friends, colleagues, and neighbors.

Think about that for a moment. Is the Preacher — and God through the Preacher — really saying that the day we weep over a loved one’s death is better than the day we laugh for joy over a loved one’s newborn baby? Yes, he is. But he means it in a limited, specific sense.

What Death Has to Say

We can see what the Preacher means by reading more of the context:

A good name is better than precious ointment,     and the day of death than the day of birth.It is better to go to the house of mourning     than to go to the house of feasting,for this is the end of all mankind,     and the living will lay it to heart.Sorrow is better than laughter,     for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,     but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. (Ecclesiastes 7:1–4)

This clarifies the Preacher’s point. The day of death is better than the day of birth in the sense that death speaks to us in ways birth does not. For death says,

You too are going to die, perhaps sooner than you think. And so will every other person you love and every mourner who pays his respects to this loved one whose final earthly end has come. If you are wise, you will take this to heart and live with your end in mind.

That’s not a message anyone hears at a baby shower.

Wisdom’s Counterintuitive Way

When we read through the wisdom literature of the Bible, we see this strange motif: we gain wisdom by paying careful attention to and learning to embrace things we would rather avoid.

We would rather avoid the significant discomfort that discipline requires, yet we see that “whoever loves discipline loves knowledge” (Proverbs 12:1).
We would rather avoid the unpleasant, humbling experience of being corrected, yet we see that “whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence” (Proverbs 15:32).
We would certainly rather avoid the more painful correction of being rebuked, yet we hear a wise man say, “Let a righteous man strike me — it is a kindness; let him rebuke me — it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it” (Psalm 141:5).
And we would really rather avoid afflictions of any kind, yet we hear another wise man say, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71).

“We gain wisdom by paying careful attention to and learning to embrace things we would rather avoid.”

The way of wisdom is often counterintuitive. We must learn to love instruction from teachers we intuitively fear because they have lessons we cannot live without. That’s why, when it comes to baby showers and funerals, the Preacher says, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth” (Ecclesiastes 7:4).

But he doesn’t mean that we’re fools if we ever celebrate a baby’s birth. For the Preacher also says, “For everything there is a season,” including “a time to be born, and a time to die,” and God “has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:1–2, 11). There’s a time to enjoy the beauty of a new life. But the Preacher does mean that we’re fools if, because we fear death, we avoid listening to its depressing instruction by keeping ourselves distracted and entertained in houses of mirth. For the wise discover that essential springs of life flow from what we learn in houses of mourning.

What Endings Reveal

The Preacher also wants us to know that we’re wise to listen carefully not only to what a death has to teach us, but to what every significant ending has to teach us. That’s why he widens his focus from death to include endings in general: “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning” (Ecclesiastes 7:8).

“The end of a thing reveals what its beginning conceals.”

He says this not only because every significant ending in our lives carries the echo of death’s message, but also because the end of a thing reveals what its beginning conceals. Whereas a beginning makes us hopeful by promising a better future, we discover only in the end whether the promise, or the promise-maker, was truly worthy of the hope we had. And significant endings also often reveal the true spiritual state of our hearts — what we truly trust in, what truly gives us hope, and what we truly treasure.

Here’s one example of a revealing end.

Death of a Promise

One day, years ago, when my brother and I were washing windows to put ourselves through college (me) and seminary (my brother), we were working at the home of a well-to-do elderly couple. The husband had attained remarkable career success as the founder of a company that ran a large regional chain of supermarkets, which he then handed over to his children when he retired. He had achieved the American dream.

But he turned out to be a dour, depressed, angry, bitter man. At one point, after he’d said something needlessly harsh to us and trudged off, his wife came over and apologized. She turned out to be just the opposite: buoyant, joyful, gracious, and kind. As we talked, we discovered she was a sister in Christ and had an earnest, vibrant faith. She discreetly shared with us her deep heartache over her husband’s rejection of Christ and her concern over his severe depression, which had set in when his declining capacities and health forced him to relinquish his leadership and influence in his beloved company. When his career ended, so did any meaningful purpose to his life. When we finished the windows, we prayed with her and for him.

The following year, when the woman hired us again, she was alone. Her husband, having nothing more to live for, had died. She was grieving. But her hope in Christ was strong, and her peace surpassed mere human understanding.

No doubt, this man began his career with the hope-fueled energy of a promising future. But its end revealed that the expiration date on this promise was the same as the career’s. When it was over, his remaining prosperity and prestige were hollow, having been emptied of a future and a hope.

Are You Paying Attention?

The Preacher knows how attracted we are to the hopeful siren songs wafting from the houses of mirth, and how repulsed we are by the fearsome dirges emanating from the houses of mourning. But he also knows how deceptive those siren songs can be and how those dirges can lead us to the Source of the springs of life.

So, in Ecclesiastes 7, he pushes us into the deep end of the pool by declaring that the day of death is better than the day of birth, and the end of a thing is better than its beginning. In other words, “You would be wise to pay careful attention to what your endings are telling you, especially when you encounter a death. These fearsome instructors will make you wise if you listen to them, but you ignore them at your peril.”

The Preacher leaves each of us with an implicit question to answer: What are your endings revealing? For if we pay careful attention, they will reveal to us what we’ve truly placed our faith in, what is truly our ultimate source of hope, and what is truly our greatest treasure. They are important lessons to learn. For all we will carry with us beyond our death is our faith, our hope, and our love.