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.

I often need to check myself as to whether I am placing the emphasis on “the Lord’s ministry through me” or “the Lord’s ministry through me.” I suspect most pastors and leaders know what I mean.

The weed grows quietly. How are my articles doing? How is my small group maturing? How is my book selling, my podcast rating? Are my Sunday-morning prayers especially encouraging? Is my preaching, my marriage counseling, my evangelistic effort particularly effective?

I am not talking about the holy ambition proper to a minister who loves souls and the glory of Christ (Romans 15:20). I am talking about a self-congratulatory spirit that pats oneself on the back and thinks better of the work simply because it is his. I am talking about tangled motives. The silent smirk or sunken shoulders. The slipping of some glory into one’s pocket. The temptation captured in John Bunyan’s response when someone told him he had preached a delightful sermon: “You are too late; the devil told me that before I left the pulpit.”

The success of others, even close friends, can reveal the drift. The warm sensation that washes over when they excel in the area where your strengths also lie. The gnawing suspicion, the feeling of threat, the envy, the bitterness, the embarrassment, the self-pity. Instead of rejoicing that God has advanced his own name and benefited souls, all is not well simply because the eternal God chose to use them instead of me.

The temptation stands to full height, however, when others succeed in the very place that we have failed. Someone else takes the people higher than we could climb, leads them farther than we could walk. We, like Saul, have conquered our thousands, yet the people sing of another who has conquered his ten thousands. We are the lesser light. The comparison drove Saul mad. He hurled a spear at David to kill him (1 Samuel 18:10–11). What is our response?

We might pray, however much ministry still lies ahead of us, that we have the shepherd’s heart that Moses did in his final days.

Looking at the Promise

Let’s appreciate the difficulty facing Moses at the end of his ministry. After Moses had “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter”; after he had chosen rather to be “mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:24–25); after bringing Egypt to its knees, leading Israel through the Red Sea, climbing Mount Sinai, and wandering for decades in the wilderness, his journey ends overlooking — but not overstepping — the boundary to the Promised Land.

Old age, you may remember, did not bar the prophet from the land of milk and honey. “Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated” (Deuteronomy 34:7). The Delilah of old age did not cut the lock of his strength; God did.

God kept Moses from the Promised Land because of sin. Frustrated with the people (who were yet again complaining and grumbling), Moses struck with his staff the water-giving Rock, a type of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4; Numbers 20:11). God told him to speak to the rock, but Moses went with a more aggressive approach (Numbers 20:8). Afterward, God said,

Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them. (Numbers 20:12)

And he did not.

“God allowed Moses to lead them out of Egypt, but not into the land of promise.”

In his final days, God led Moses up a mountain and showed him the full breadth and length of the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 34:1–4). And there — overlooking the land he led the people toward for decades — Moses died. The privilege to lead the people across the Jordan fell to his assistant, Joshua. God himself buried his servant on that mountain, on the wrong side of the Jordan (Deuteronomy 34:5–6). He allowed Moses to lead them out of Egypt, but not into the land of promise.

Heart of a Shepherd

Disciplined and disappointed, how does Moses respond?

After the Lord calls him to go up the mountain and reminds him why he won’t enter (Numbers 27:12–14), Moses, the meekest man on earth (Numbers 12:3), answers,

Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd. (Numbers 27:15–17)

Here is the heart of a faithful shepherd. Here is an example for pastors and leaders to follow. Moses does not grumble. He does not accuse God of unfairness. He does not mope that God would not listen to his requests to enter the land (Deuteronomy 3:25–26). He does not sabotage Joshua or hurl spears at him. He does not consider his reputation, or his ministry, above the God he ministered for and the people he ministered to. He asks his God, in full submission to his will, not to leave the people shepherdless.

Then Feed My Sheep

This is not the last time we see Moses alive in Scripture. Do you remember where else he appears?

Many hundreds of years later, Moses would meet the great Shepherd of God’s people face to face. On a different mountain, the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses would speak with Jesus. What did they discuss? Jesus’s “departure” (literally, his “exodus,” Luke 9:31). Moses stands with Elijah, speaking to Jesus, the Good Shepherd, about how he would not abandon his sheep to the wolves as a hireling might, but would lay down his life for them. And about how he would rise, for he would not leave the sheep shepherdless.

This is the love that disentangles the nagging sense of self from our service.

“Love for Christ’s bride shakes us free from posturing for her attention and admiration.”

We find due north again in our labors when we, like Paul, begin to yearn for the church with the affections of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:8), to be in labor pains until Christ is formed in her (Galatians 4:19). When we see her — in the small measure we get to labor in her service — as our hope and our joy and our crown of boasting before the Lord at his return (1 Thessalonians 2:19).

This love purifies our ambition for lasting influence while restoring the humble delight when greater success falls to another. We seek to do the church good while hoping others do more good than we ever could. Threats become brothers to us again when we learn to long for others’ success where we have failed, when we long for others to take God’s people across the Jordans we never could. When we begin to pray, “Feed the sheep by any hand.”

This love for Christ’s bride shakes us free from posturing for her attention and admiration. We play our parts, knowing that loving her is loving him, as Jesus himself reminds us: “Pastor, leader, minister, do you love me? Then shepherd my lambs” (John 21:15–17).

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15835384/the-danger-of-skipping-1-thessalonians