I'm going to tell you this morning why this church is the best group to belong to anywhere. It's better than any football team, local or national. It's better than any dance or music group. It is even better than the WI or the Scouts.
I'm also going to tell you why my job is therefore the best job in the world. It's better than Gareth Southgate's job—see, I can say that today, can't I? On Wednesday morning, I have this sinking feeling that he's going to have the worst job in the world. But for today, his job's okay, and lots of people will think that'd be a nice job to have.
It's better than the job I did before I was ordained, although I have to say the responsibilities associated with this job really scare me, as you will see.
Let me just recap where we are. We're in week two of four weeks working our way through Acts chapter 20 together. The chapter has a flow to it, and the talks I'm giving on the chapter have a flow to them. So if you weren't here last week, let me encourage you to go to our website, find our YouTube channel, and listen to the one that you missed from last week. It will not only be important to hear in its own right; it will also make more sense of what I'm about to say today.
But just to remind you of the key bits of context: the Apostle Paul's custom was to visit a town once to establish a new church, and then to visit that same town a second time to see how the new church was going. Then he would say goodbye, and they would manage without him. This speech in Acts 20 is Paul's goodbye speech on his second visit to the church in Ephesus. Luke, who compiled the book of Acts, includes it so that we might know what Paul says every time it was time to say goodbye to a church and leave it to fend for itself without his day-to-day involvement.
As the church in Ephesus prepares for Paul to leave and them to be on their own, Paul wants them to be absolutely clear what the church is. And he wants to be clear why the leaders that there are have been left in charge, and what their job is.
So there are two areas for us here. There's what the church is, and what is the responsibility and work of those given leadership roles within the church.
1. The church: God’s prized possession
So first, what the church is. It is God's prized possession. It's God's prized possession.
You don't get many of them around here, but there are some more in the West Country. Maybe you've been to an agricultural show, and a farmer has brought to show off his prize bull. Or maybe you've been to a classic car show, and all kinds of people have brought their prize classic car that is their love and joy, that they've polished and maintained and cared for for 20, 30 years—and it's many, many, many decades older than that.
Well, the church is God's prize possession. So here is part of verse 28: he says, Be shepherds of the church of God. It's his church.
Maybe you have in your house some family heirloom that's been passed down the generations and is now hanging on one of your walls, or up in your loft. When I was recently phoning around removals companies to get quotations for removals, one of them said, "I need to ask this: do you have any works of art in your house worth £3,000 or more?" To which the answer was no. But some people do—because maybe it was their great-great-great-great-grandparents', and it just gets passed down. And in time to come, you'll pass it on as well. The sort of the family heirloom, the prized possession.
The church is God's prized possession. It's the church of God, which means it's not the church of its leaders. The church does not belong to the people placed in leadership positions within it. That is the path to abuse, if ever there was one. When church leaders see the local church they serve as their church—very dangerous.
But sometimes we react to the potential for that abuse by saying, "No, the church doesn't belong to the leaders; it belongs to the people. It's everybody's church." But that's not right either. It doesn't belong to you or me. It is God's church.
Sometimes people say to me, "I'm going to start going to so-and-so's church." And maybe so-and-so is the name of the leader of the church: "I'm going to start going to Pastor Richard's church." No you're not. Pastor Richard doesn't have a church. Pastor Richard pastors a church that is God's church.
Or maybe you use the name of somebody you know who goes there: "I'm going to start going to Aunt Mary's church." Well, what do you mean by that? I know what you mean—you mean a few miles down the road, it's the church that Aunt Mary goes to, and I'm going to go to the church that Aunt Mary attends. I know that. It's kind of shorthand for that. But it's dangerous shorthand, because it isn't actually Aunt Mary's church either. It's God's church.
You may remember a couple of years ago, we worked our way together through Paul's letter of 1 Corinthians. And you may remember, if you were with us then, that the opening of that letter—Paul, it's from Paul, Silas and Timothy to the church of God in Corinth. And we just paused to notice that, when we were in that very first verse of 1 Corinthians, which way round it is. It's not the church of Corinth that is in God. It is the church of God that is in Corinth.
So this is not here the church of Kemsing. It's not my church. It's not your church. It's God's church that happens to be in Kemsing. And if you go to a different church, you're not going to—you’re going to God's church somewhere else.
Which means that we are, those of us who are here in this day and age and this generation—we are looking after this church on God's behalf. It's like we're house-sitting.
A friend of ours, their summer holiday this year, they've got some friends on the Isle of Wight—they're going to go and stay in their house for a couple of weeks. Good idea. If you're doing that, you have to remember, don't you, that the house you're staying in is not yours. You're just staying in somebody else's house for a season, and you treat it in a way that respects it as theirs.
And we are staying in the church of Kemsing for a season. But it's God's church, and we don't forget that. We look after it on trust.
But God didn't actually inherit the church. It wasn't an heirloom passed down the generations. He actually bought it. So have another look at verse 28: Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. Literally, which he bought with the blood of his own... And you have to supply the rest of the sentence: the blood of his own what?
And the words used—and the only way to make sense of that—suggests that the way to complete the sentence is: the blood of his own Son. God's one and only Son shed his blood, and so God bought the church.
So God didn't inherit the church. It wasn't passed down through his family for generations as an heirloom. He bought it at full price. He paid full hammer.
So the illustration actually is not of a piece of art that is inherited within a family. The better illustration is of, say, the classic car that someone spends 30 years of their working life setting aside a little every week—their life's ambition, in their 50s, is to be able to buy a 1930s Model T. And so they are going to set aside a little until they can put everything into that one car—paid with great price.
We often talk about Jesus's death securing benefits for us as individuals—and it does. Jesus's blood bought our forgiveness. It paid our ransom. It bore our freedom from sin and death. It paid for our adoption into God's family. Jesus's blood purchased all kinds of things.
There's an ancient document that was the agreed text that came out of an old church council called the Synod of Dort that describes the blood of Jesus as being of infinite worth.
When God paid for us with the blood of the Lord Jesus, he paid with something that is of infinite value. But that blood didn’t just pay for benefits and blessings for us as individual Christians. It bought, it convened, it created, it brought together God’s church. Which means we are deeply precious to God. He paid for this church to exist with something of infinite value. God therefore cares very, very deeply for us, which is why I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the best group to belong to anywhere, because there is no other group you could ever join that can be said of it that it is God’s prized possession, bought for him with the blood of his one and only son.
And don’t ever say what I often hear people say, “I just go to a normal church”. There is no such thing as a normal church. If you go to a church, you go to something that the blood of the Lord Jesus himself bought for God to have as his own. So that’s what the church is: It is God’s prized possession paid for with the blood of Christ.
2. Church leaders: Appointed by God to protected the church
But secondly, we have to think about what church leaders are for. Church leaders are appointed by God the Holy Spirit to protect the church. Church leaders are appointed by God the Holy Spirit to protect the church. So let's look at the beginning of verse 28. I will look at the other three verses at some point, I promise, but the beginning of verse 28 says, Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. The Holy Spirit has made you overseers. These leaders are appointed by God the Holy Spirit.
Humanly speaking, of course, the Apostle Paul picked them. Today, anybody in any position of leadership in any church is put in post by human beings. We elect our PCC, we—the vicar or the wardens or the children's team or whatever it might be—appoint people to positions of leadership within certain areas of the church.
I went through a selection project involving meeting one bishop, various other selectors and various other people, including a residential conference spanning about a year and a half, before the Church of England decided to recommend that I get trained for ordination. There are human beings that lead to the appointment of anybody in a position of leadership. But once they are in post, God the Holy Spirit appointed them. After all, it's his church, so he decides who leads it.
It's a bit like—how would you describe the Lord Jesus? Is he human or is he God? Answer: both. He's a full human being. He bled—just think about that—he wept, he hungered, he ate, he drank, he slept. He's a human being. But because he's human, that doesn't make him any less fully God.
What kind of book is the Bible? Well, it's the work of a whole load of different authors. Luke wrote the book of Acts having done painstaking and meticulous historical research. But having put his account together, it forms part of the Bible, which is the word of God, so that every word that's in here is exactly what God wants to be in here.
And so we say: what kind of person is a church leader? Well, they were appointed by human beings—committees, individuals, selection processes, referees were taken—but at the same time, once they're in post, they're there because God wants them to be there.
About 25–30 odd years ago, I spent a week with a church leader who was nearing retirement, and he said to me, "I could never have kept going if I hadn't known that God had called me to the ministry I'm in. I would have given up long ago."
Now I think what he meant by that is that as he was starting out, he had some kind of a subjective experience that he felt God was pushing him into that direction. I mean, God does give some church leaders that sense of a subjective call to the ministry. But he didn't need to mean that, because even if he'd had none of that, the very fact that he's in the post he's in means that God is the one who wants him there.
Now, at this point, there may be some alarm bells ringing in your ears. There should be. You might be thinking that this has the potential to lead to leaders who think that they have a divine mandate, and therefore they can do what they like—they have absolute power and they can abuse their position. That may be the something that's just worrying you slightly. If so, stay with us, because we need to look at what their job is.
And their job, in verse 28, is twofold. Keep watch, first he says, over yourselves. They have to keep watch over themselves. Their own spiritual health is to be guarded. Or to use the airline analogy—make sure you're wearing your own oxygen mask before you try to help somebody else. So the pastor, the home group leader, the lay minister, the PCC member, the children's volunteer—they're of no use to others if their own spiritual health is in tatters. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.
The second part of their job is to keep watch over the church—to watch it, to guard it, to protect it, to guard it from two specific dangers that we will look at over the next two Sundays. They come later in the chapter, but for today, we see how they are to protect the church, because Paul is their example.
Now it's time to look at verses other than just verse 28. Verse 27: I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. We thought about that a bit last week. Paul taught them everything that God had revealed in the Bible. He didn't just cherry-pick the bits that he thought would be palatable and make him popular and bring in the donations. He didn't just fly his favourite kites, give them the bees buzzing around in his bonnet, give them the things that he likes to talk about—his little hobby horses. He gave them everything that God has to say.
And because of this, Paul says this makes him innocent of their blood. Verse 26: Therefore, I declare to you today, I am innocent of the blood of any of you. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.
Slightly strange idea—that Paul is innocent of their blood. The background comes in the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament. Ezekiel chapter 3, verses 16 to 19. Assuming a few of you may be rusty on your Ezekiel 3, let me read those verses for you:
At the end of seven days the word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to a wicked person, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin, but you will have saved yourself."
So Paul, Ezekiel—they're entrusted with God's word to pass on to other people. If they proclaim it and it's ignored, it is not their fault. But if they fail to proclaim the word with which they've been entrusted, and damage happens to other Christians or to a church, God will hold them accountable for everything that goes wrong.
So church leaders are appointed by God the Holy Spirit to protect the church by teaching the whole will of God. But it remains God's church, not theirs, and God will hold them accountable for what they do. That means that our church leaders need our prayers and our support, because the responsibility they carry is weighty—and it's frankly scary.
Conclusion
Most of us, I think, underestimate two things: we underestimate how precious the church is, and we underestimate how weighty are the responsibilities of those who are called to leadership within the church at any level.
But I really wasn't kidding. There is no higher privilege than to belong to the church of God, which he purchased with the blood of his one and only Son.