Note: Devotion taken from last
Sunday morning’s sermon on Hebrews 13:17-19.
“Pray for us” (Hebrews 13:18a).
In
addition to obedience and submission to those who have the rule over them
(Hebrews 13:17), the inspired author adds in v. 18 another duty which God’s
people have toward their spiritual leaders.
They are to pray for them.
Pastors and elders need the prayers of God’s people. We need your prayers, because we are often on
the frontlines of spiritual warfare. We
are often under attack. Satan likes
nothing better than to discourage a man who is in the ministry or to try to
remove him from his office and calling.
Just as in battle one force will attempt to take out the officers to
demoralize the troops and take away their coordination and leadership, so our
enemy loves to attack and discourage the elders.
In
1605 the English Puritan pastor Williams Perkins wrote a booklet titled “The
Calling of the Ministry” (reprinted by Banner of Truth in the Puritan paperback
titled The Art of Prophesying). One
chapter is titled, “The Scarcity of True Ministers.” In it Perkins ponders why so few men in his
own day seemed to be called to or qualified for the ministry. He gave three reasons:
First, the contempt with which
the calling is treated. It is always
hated by wicked and irreverent men because it reveals their filthiness and
unmasks their hypocrisy. The teaching of
ministers is often a fretting corrosive on their conscience, preventing them
from weltering and wallowing quietly in their sins—as they would be able to do
under other circumstances. This is why
they spurn both the calling of ministers and ministers themselves. They watch them carefully to latch onto their
smallest failures, hoping to disgrace them.
They imagine that by casting contempt on the calling of the preacher
they can remove the shame from their own degraded ways.
It is inevitable that they
should hate those who are called to the ministry, since they harbor deadly
hatred both for the law and the gospel message which they bring, and for the
God whose representatives they are…..
The second reason is the
difficulty of discharging the duties of a minister’s calling. To stand in God’s presence, to enter into the
holy of holies, to go between God and his people, to be God’s mouth to his
people, and the people’s to God … to take the care and charge of souls—these
considerations overwhelm the consciences of men who approach the sacred seat of
the preacher with reverence and not with rashness…..
The third and last reason is
especially relevant to ministry in the NT era, namely the inadequacy of the
financial recompense and status given to those who enter this calling….. (in The Art of Prophesying, pp. 94-95).
A few
years ago I went to an office building to take care of some business. When the man at the counter found out I was
in the ministry, his face became very grave and serious, and he told me, almost
through tears, that he had once been in the ministry. He did not have to say much more, because I
understood. Indeed, I have met many men
who used to be in the ministry. Some no
doubt left because they were not called.
But some have left through grief and discouragement. Perhaps they lacked the prayers of God’s
people to uphold them.
“Brethren,
pray for us” (1 Thessalonians 5:25).
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
No comments:
Post a Comment