Gospel-Driven Pastors

Let me invite you to take your Bibles and turn to First Corinthians, chapter one, verses 18 through 31. So we talked tonight about gospel driven pastors. Let's begin. Reading that together, if you'll read along silently as I read out loud. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning. I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus. who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. I want to do something a little bit different tonight by offering to you what I'm calling a preachy devotion. We're not going to dig quite as deeply into this text as we would if this was an old-fashioned sermon. But I hope it's going to be more substantive than what typically passes for a devotion. I just want to be a little bit more conversational with you tonight. As you well know, you are at a crucial point in your church's history. You're getting ready to make a decision upon which much of who you're going to be Possibly for the next couple of decades, you're going to hinge upon the decision that you make as you look for a new pastor. And so that's why I want to look at this passage tonight from First Corinthians 1, 18 through 31, because I think. that what's happening here is Paul is telling us the priorities that he brought whenever he came to work with the church at Corinth. And you will do little better than to look for the same qualities in the pastor that's going to come to Jefferson Park than consider these things that we see with Paul. Paul's priorities are what I call gospel-driven. I think he's telling us in this passage what a gospel-driven ministry looks like, at least from the pastor's standpoint. And so, as we look at this passage together, I want to focus upon two different characteristics of a gospel-driven pastor. Again, from the example of Paul and his ministry that he had among the Corinthians. And I'm just going to look at each of these two paragraphs in most of your Bibles. It's probably one through, excuse me, 18 through 25 is a paragraph, 26 through 31 is a paragraph, and I think each one of them give us a different priority. And so the first in verses 18 through 25, gospel-driven pastors proclaim the right message. Gospel driven pastors proclaim the right message. Notice again what it says in verse 18, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Paul calls the right message that gospel driven pastors proclaim the word of the cross. And I think when he uses that phrase, the word of the cross, that's just a synonym for gospel. I think he's using the word of the cross in the same way that he might use the word gospel or the phrase good news. And I assume this because Paul argues that the gospel is what he was preaching to them just a little bit later on in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 1 through 4. Let me read that for you. You're welcome to turn there if you would like to. 1 Corinthians 15, actually 1 through 5. Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain, for I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas then to the twelve. So Paul tells us later on in first Corinthians that the gospel he believed and preached when he was with the Corinthians before, which is what he's talking about now, this message that he preached was that Christ died and was raised on behalf of sinners in accordance with the scriptures. This is the message of the cross. This is what Paul's talking about when he talks about the message that he proclaimed to the Corinthians. I think it's worth noting that in Paul's mind, The crucifixion and resurrection are foundational doctrines, to be sure, but we get the impression they're not mere doctrines. They're not just doctrines. Have you ever heard something that was just a doctrine? People talk a lot about it, but it doesn't really shape their life. That's not what's going on here. These are key doctrines, but they're not mere doctrines. They are rather part of a bigger story because he tells us that the death and resurrection were in accordance with the scriptures. The Old Testament, remember this morning, that's what he's talking about when he says the scriptures, these things, the death and resurrection were not accidents of history. They were meant to happen and they were consistent with everything in scripture that had happened to that point. Everything we see in the Old Testament is pointing to that moment that Paul later in Galatians calls the fullness of time, whenever Christ comes and he lives and he dies and he's raised and now he intercedes and one day he's coming back. Everything in the Old Testament was pointing to this. Furthermore, I think when we think about the crucifixion and resurrection, we ought not just to think about them as things that we believe in order to come to faith in Christ. There are also crucial parts in this story, this grand storyline of Scripture. And if we don't understand the grand storyline of Scripture, we're not going to know why the crucifixion and resurrection were necessary. We're not going to understand what it is that they accomplished. And we're not going to know how these events have changed individual lives and how they've changed the course of human history. We need to know the back story if we're going to really understand the message. And your pastor is going to need to know the story if he's going to preach the Gospels. The gospel is at its heart a story of creation and fall and promise and redemption and restoration. All of these things with the person and work of Jesus Christ at the center of the story. It's only whenever we as individuals get caught up in this story of stories that our own individual stories make sense, right? We become part of something bigger than ourselves. We're now people who are standing in the shadow of this cross that has changed history. This shadow of the cross that is a plot twist. It didn't have to go that way, did it? God didn't have to do it, but from the very beginning, he promised he would do it. And everything that happens subsequent to the sin of Adam and Eve is leading to that moment when the story changes, that plot twist when all things begin to become new. So to personalize a little bit, we might say that the gospel that Paul was preaching, was the announcement of all that God has done on behalf of sinners through the perfect life, atoning death, and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, and he's rooting those facts in this story, which is in fact the true story of the world. The creation, fall, redemption, and one day new creation of everything that we see. So I think the gospel is the word of the cross that he's talking about here. And I think that it's the right message for any pastor and the right message for your future pastor to proclaim. Now, I think when we look back at this first paragraph in verses 18 through 25, we see that different people respond to this gospel in different ways, don't we? We see at least two different types of responses. We see that the gospel is folly, silliness. to those people who reject it. And even our own world has its Jews demanding signs and Greeks demanding worldly wisdom, doesn't it? You're here in a university town. Have you ever met somebody who thought they were just a little too smart for this whole Jesus thing? It's a little too educated for this story. This is like a nursery rhyme to many of the people who are around us. They fit this bill. They've got the world's wisdom. But this true wisdom seems like folly to them. It's something that they don't understand. And Paul told us that this was going to be the case. It shouldn't surprise us. The gospel is a stumbling block to many people. That's the language that he uses. But we need to remember that God's foolishness is wiser than the accumulation of all the world's wisdom. And his weakness is stronger than the multiplied armies of the earth. That's what we need to lean on. And though it may seem like silliness, though it may seem like folly in the eyes of fallen men, the gospel is the very power of God for those people who are being saved. It's the power of God for people just like you and just like me who once were rebels, storming the gates of the true king till he changed our hearts and we laid down our pitchforks and we came into his family as sons and daughters of the living God. It is the proclamation of the gospel that is the sacred task of pastors. And let me be clear, the gospel is not just a formula that you believe to come into the family. The gospel is not just for lost people. Christians in general do pretty good of understanding that the gospel is for lost people. But friends, the gospel is for us too, isn't it? The same gospel that gets us in is the gospel that keeps us in. It's the good news that perseveres us to the end. It's the good news not just of what we used to be and what we are now, praise God, but it's also the good news of what we're becoming. through what Christ is doing in each and every one of us. This is the message he must preach. This is the message that he has to tease out of every page of scripture because it's the message that is behind every word of scripture. The good news of all that God is doing on our behalf through Jesus Christ. And so as you search for your new pastor, it is imperative that you call a man who preaches the right message. He understands this story and he understands the role that these great truths, these great doctrines play in this story. What you don't need is what's all too common. A man who simply repackages Dr. Phil. or Oprah or whoever it may be and tries to hang their ideas on a Bible verse or two. You don't need that. There's too many pastors out there that are preaching seven steps to stress free living. And there does the gospel arrive. That's not what you need. You don't need someone who's going to tell you how to be a better husband or how to be a better father. Those are the fruit of the gospel. That's not the main thing. You need a guy who's going to preach the gospel and apply the gospel, trusting that when he's doing that, you'll learn how to live a better life. You'll learn how to be a better husband and father. You'll learn how to be a better wife. You'll learn how to be better parents. You'll learn how to better interact with the people around you. Those aren't the most important things. The gospel is the most important things. And if he rightly preaches the gospel, he will help you with those things as well. You need a man who is mighty in the scriptures and who preaches the gospel, applying it to every aspect of your individual lives and to the lives of your family and to the lives of your church, the life of your church. And if that's not what he's preaching, then he is not the man you need to call. It doesn't matter how winsome he is, how smart he is, how good a speaker he is. If that's not his message, look elsewhere. If that's not his message, don't waste your time. Don't take a step back. Keep moving forward and move forward in the power of the right message being preached by the right man. And that right message is the gospel. Gospel driven pastors proclaim the right message. But I think Paul also tells us secondly, that gospel driven pastors place their confidence in the right place. And I think we see this in verses 26 through 31. So think about this with me for just a minute. Paul's just explained to us how the gospel seems like folly to the lost world. He now turns to Christians themselves and he notes that the verdict is not that much better. He says that Christians are not very wise. Not very powerful, not very noble. How's that for a resume? But God isn't hinged in by these limitations, is he? Because he tells us that he has chosen the foolish to shame the wise. He's chosen the weak to shame the strong. It's the low and the despised and the nobody's. That God uses. And when Paul is telling us this, you know, we're so used to Bible language, we're missing this. This is scandalous. God doesn't use the smartest people. He doesn't pick the best leaders. He doesn't pick the most gifted people. That's not the way God works. He exalts the humble. He uses the weak. He uses those who are not wise in the ways of the world, and he does that so that he might be glorified and we might see how glorious he is. Look at this vessel he's using. How great is our God? This is what we should be doing rather than creating our own cult of boasting and our own cult of who's the best and who's the most gifted. When Paul talks about this, he sounds a lot like Jesus. Remember, it's Jesus who taught us in the gospel that the world's hierarchies are not what really matters, because in the kingdom, it's who that's first. It's the last. The last is first. The first is last. Jesus turns the table on what we expect. Jesus doesn't care a lot about human common sense. Have you ever noticed that? There's so many things that our common sense would tell us. And Jesus comes along and he says, common sense. That's not how it happens. This is how it happens. Common sense tells us that those who work hard win the reward. What does Jesus say? If you want to win the reward, stop working, just rest. The world tells us that those people who want to be first, they're the ones who are going to be who are going to succeed. What does Jesus say? If you want to succeed, be last. Jesus reverses what we expect, because that's what the gospel does. It turns our fallen expectations on their head so that he's the one who gets the glory. As he works in our lives and as he works in our families and as he works in our churches. And why are things this way? Why is it that we're not the smartest and we're not the most gifted and we're not the ones who are out there in the secular sphere changing the world? Why is it he's using us? He tells us in verse twenty nine so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. Instead of boasting on the basis of our own feeble talents and accomplishments, Paul tells us to boast in the Lord because we have believed the gospel and we are now in Christ. He says that Christ is the wisdom from God. He is our righteousness. We can't earn it. He's our sanctification. We don't keep it going. He is our redemption. We can't save ourselves. All of this is just another way of saying he's the one who saved us and he's the one who is saving us and he is the one who will save us at the last day. Excuse me, I'm getting near the end of the day. Brothers and sisters, we don't have anything if we don't have Christ. Everything without Christ equals nothing. Nothing plus Christ equals everything. This is true for us as individuals. This is true of your church. We have nothing to boast of before God. No pastor has anything to boast of before God. Verse thirty one is rather the way things are supposed to be. Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Let's be honest, it's just us talking. We know sometimes that we each of us struggle with this, don't we? All of us in various ways struggle with pride. All of us fall short of this perfect boasting only in the Lord. Maybe it doesn't happen to you every day, but it happens to all of us sometimes. It's very tempting even for us as churches to find things to boast about. We boast about our baptisms. We boast about our budgets. We boast about our buildings. We boast about how many bottoms are filling our pews. We find things to boast about. And the dirty little secret is it's just like that for pastors. It is a special temptation for pastors. I can't tell you how many times I've been to peacock, peacock strutting contests under the guise of a pastor's conference or an evangelism conference or something like that. It is tempting for pastors to think this way. Friends, don't find a pastor who thinks this way. Every man's going to struggle with it. But don't don't call a man who's given himself over to this as you look for a pastor. Look for a man of gospel humility, a man who boasts only in the Lord rather than his own smarts or his own giftedness or his own creativity. And you know what? If he's a guy who boasts only in the Lord, that probably means he's got a lot of smarts and giftedness and creativity. But by God's grace, he doesn't know it. And that's exactly the type of guy that you need, the type of guy who Maybe he could succeed if he's out there doing other stuff, but he knows the only reason he's succeeding behind these walls is because of what Christ is doing through him and the way the Holy Spirit is working through him. He could be as eloquent as the day is long, and not a life is going to be changed if the Holy Spirit's not working. Pray that he's a man who knows this, a man who understands this. Look for a man of prayer and compassion. Look for a man who knows that he still needs the gospel. Look for that guy. He doesn't think he's arrived. He knows he still needs the gospel. And that it's only through the spirits working in his life and in the life of this church that we are going to be changed and that this community is going to be changed. If he doesn't understand that, he's not worth having. Look for a man who exudes gospel humility Who knows that it really is all about God? He alone will get the glory and Jefferson Park Baptist Church could disappear tomorrow And that would be a tragedy for the people in this building would that it would be a blip for the kingdom because God alone Gets the glory. He doesn't need you But pray that he'll use you and that he wants you and that your pastor understands that that he is not the best thing that's happened to this church. Instead, he's an instrument that God is using to mobilize you as instruments so that God can use you all to turn this community upside down for the sake of the gospel. As I finish up tonight, I'm not sure that I'm going to have another opportunity to be with you again, and I have mixed feelings about that. Because there's a part of me that would love to be here again next week and the week after that and we'll just have a big old time until you guys find a pastor. There's another part of me who frankly hopes that you find a new pastor very soon just because that's what's best for you and it would be great if I don't have to come back because you found a pastor in just a couple of months and you're rocking along and everything is great. So I'm going to assume for a moment that this is the last time that we're going to be together for a while, at least the last time that we're going to be together until I come back up just to visit. But this will be the last time that we're going to be together with me in this capacity. And if it is, in fact, the last time, I want to offer some final thoughts about your search for a pastor. As I've said in the past, and I think it bears repeating, I said this in the very first sermon I preached here. I would urge you to look for a man who will build on the foundation that has been laid over the past dozen years. The solution to your situation is not a return to the early 1990s. That's as bluntly as I can say that. The solution to your situation is to move forward in the same direction you are already going. I said this before, I will say it again. You have the right template. Don't change the template. Look for a new man who can lead you in the same direction for the glory of Christ to be the church that he wants you to be. That is the Lord. Second, the Lord wants you to be not the man. So hopefully he wants you to be what the Lord wants you to be. Second. Look for a man who understands that the pastor's primary responsibility is the ministry of the word and prayer. And this is so important. Give him the freedom to devote most of his time to these things. But make sure it's the word and prayer. We get that word part. You're a church that's used to good preaching. You're used to good preaching. You've had several years of good preaching, and that's great. And I hope that you get very good preaching and that he's a good preacher and you know he's spending time in the study. Make sure he's spending enough of that time on his knees as well, though, and that he's not just in the word preparing great little 47 minute sermons for Sunday morning and 35 sermon, 35 minute sermons for Sunday night or whatever it's going to be. But make sure that he's also a man who's getting calluses on his knees as he's praying for you and your family. Make sure that what's happened here tonight in the first 35 minutes that we're together is happening daily in his life. You want a man who's going to be a role model in this. Give him the time he needs to be the man of the word and prayer that he needs to be. For his own sanctification and for your sake as a church, you need him to do these things more than you need him to be a good leader or a creative vision caster or an administrator or whatever type of secular responsibilities that we've passed off on pastors. And don't get me wrong, pastors should know how to do some of those things. But make sure that fundamentally he is a man of prayer and he's a man of the word because that's what you need most. You need that much more than you need a dynamic leader because we've already seen that it is not through the world's ideas of leadership that Christ works. It's through the power of the cross. If he is a man of the word and he is a man of prayer, he will be the type of leader that you need even if it doesn't fit the paradigm of leadership that we might see in other places and that might even be perfectly appropriate in other places. Number three. Look for a man who is willing to offer biblical counsel when you are going through tough times, not a guy who simply baptizes pop psychology. We see this all over the place. Don't call the guy who baptizes Dr. Phil and tells you that it's really all about you and that if you can just fall in love a little bit more with you, all your problems are going to work out. Friends, that's the opposite of the gospel. It's not about you. It's all about God. And you find a man who even in his counseling with you, it's rooted in the word. And his first instinct is to say, let's see what God has to say about the situation that you're going through or that your family is going through and things like that. His gut instinct needs to be, let's go to the word, not let's see what the current theory is out there that Time Magazine talked about on the cover page a couple of months ago about such and such disorder that we really don't even know what it is, but we've got a medicine for it. And I think that there's a place for that sometimes. I do think there's a place for things like medicines and stuff like that. I was talking with Chip and John Bowman about that. Even last night, I absolutely think that there are people with those types of problems. But everybody has sin problems and every pastor needs to know how to address those things from scripture. Look for a man whose gut instinct is to go to scripture when he's sitting across the desk from you and you're saying, Pastor, I need to talk to you about something. Number four, look for a man who is a soul winner. Friends, your church gathers in the midst of massive and well-educated lostness. I don't have to tell you that. You understand your geography better than I do. If you don't find a man who is committed to evangelism and who wants to lead you in evangelism, you will squander the geography that the Lord has given you. You are not here by accident. Christ has many people in this city and he wants to use you to find these people. And if you call the right pastor, he will be an instrument that God is using to make you all the instruments to find all the people that he's going to save in Charlottesville, Virginia. I know it is a dark city. I live within baseball throwing distance of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which is Charlottesville South. They're the same city in two different states. It's even the same university. Yeah, I said it. It's the same university, except ours has a better basketball team. But it's the same university, except this year. It's the same university, but in a different state. I understand this type of culture. I live very close to this type of culture and have ministered some in this type of culture. I know what it's like to minister here where all the lost people are wicked smart and they have no use for Christianity. I understand that, but Christ wants to save this city. Call a man who understands that and a man who is as creative as the Bible will allow him to be when it comes of thinking of ways that you and a church can have a greater gospel witness in this city that stretches beyond what you do on Sundays and one or two special events during the year or whatever it is that your current tradition is. Look for a man who is creative. but rooted to scripture when it comes to thinking about how you can get side of outside of the four walls of this church and reach this community for the sake of the gospel. And finally, I would urge you to look for a man who is a role model in the way that he leads his family. You should want to be better spouses, better husbands, better wives. You should want to be better parents. You should want to be better grandparents because of the example that you see in your pastor. Call a man who you want to be like he is when you grow up, when it comes to leading a family, when it comes to being a daddy, or should he be old enough, when it comes to being a grandfather. Call a man who is a role model in these things, and they are out there. I know many of them. Call a man whose family is his first priority, but that doesn't mean he's taking time away from you. That means he's better with you because his family is his first priority. And I hope that he'll be someone who influences you in all the right ways. and someone who will lead you. It is my observation that you have many healthy families in this church. I've enjoyed getting to meet many of you. I pray that your families will be even healthier in five years because of how God is working through you and him and you guys together. You cannot begin to imagine what a good time I've had with you in the four Sundays that I've been here. You're a great church, and the Lord is moving you in a very good direction. And please know that I am praying for you, my wife is praying for you, my church is praying for you, and we are believing in faith that in the not-too-distant future, the Lord is going to lead you to a man who for many, many years is going to lead you in faithful, productive gospel ministry. And you're all going to look back in a few years and you're going to say, praise God from whom all blessings flow. What an exciting ride it's been here at this church. I'm so glad that I've been a part of it. Remember that God works all things for good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes. That is just as true of churches as it is of individuals. You have been through hard times, but I have good news. I know who wins. I've read the end of the book. Trust in the one who wins and know that your future will be brighter than you ever thought your past was. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I thank you so much for this precious church, and I thank you for the way that you're working among them, knitting their hearts together, giving them a unified vision for who they want to be. Lord, leading them to a man out there somewhere who's going to shepherd them. And Father, we just trust you in all these things. We trust that you are working in this church to make it into the body of belief that you want it to be. Father, we trust that you're working in each of these individual families to make them the families you want them to be. Father, we trust that you're working in every individual member to make him the man or to make her the woman of Christ that you want them to be. And Father, we trust in faith that right now there is somebody who may not even know it yet, but before too much time passes, is going to be the senior pastor of this church. And we trust, Lord, that it is a match made in heaven and that you will work mightily through this new gospel partnership to affect every person in this room and every member of this church and as many people in this community as you would allow. Father, we pray that you would help us in these coming days. I pray that you would help this church to attempt great things and expect great things, all for the sake of the gospel. Not so people will make much of Jefferson Park Baptist Church or the future pastor of this church, but so that people will make much of you. For it is your glory that we are chiefly concerned with. And Father, we pray all of these things in the name of our Lord and your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.