That was a bold statement Paul made when, speaking to the elders from Ephesus, he said: "I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God." Acts 20:27. In this affirmation lies the record of a true minister of the gospel. To them he also spoke the warning that must have deeply impressed the hearts of those present: "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood." Verse 28.
Note that Paul first admonishes the elders, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves." It is as important that the minister take heed to himself as for him to take heed to the flock. If one gives all his time and strength to others, and fails to save his own soul, what shall it profit him? The primary command to the elders was, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves."
This taking heed means that the minister must keep himself in spiritual health. Cholera is raging, and a physician is called to go where death is imminent. We say to him, "Take care of yourself." We mean, Do not expose yourself to the disease you are called to cure. Take every precaution to resist the contagion before you attempt to heal those who are sick and dying.
The gospel minister can feed the flock of God only as his own soul has been fed. He must have tasted the experience that he exhorts others to imitate, or his exhortations are weak and powerless. The church must have spiritual food; and that food can come only from the word of God, interpreted by men under the positive influence of the Holy Spirit. Many a congregation is fed with food which can never satisfy the longings of weak, erring souls who hunger to live the life of Christ. Fiction excites the imagination; it stimulates like some poisons; it interests; it fascinates; but it seldom makes Christians.
Too often preachers feed their congregations with stories, many of which are imaginary, and which are neither better nor worse than books of fiction presenting a moral tale. The soul cannot be fed, the spiritual life cannot grow, with such food, regardless of who serves the food. The church cannot be spiritually helped even when such fiction is mingled with or followed by good exhortations.
We warn the church against reading fiction, and at the same time we sometimes invent stories that are half imaginary, reciting them with a great display of feeling. Now if one has to listen to a preacher recite at length a tragic story, which would be very well indeed if it actually took place, but is really half invention, is it less fiction because told by a preacher from a pulpit? If reading fiction is wrong, what about preaching it? And what about stories that make laughter during serious moments when men need help? It is like a drowning man having to listen to a joke while dying. What he needs is help.
The problems of life are intensely serious; sin in every form is serious; men wrestling with overmastering passions are serious; they cannot be fed with fiction, and have their spiritual needs met. Sin-smitten men and women do not need stories, but the word of God, which speaks with far greater power than any story can speak unless it be indited by the Holy Ghost. "Is not My word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" In this word we have the power of the Holy Ghost speaking, for it was indited by that very Spirit.
If the Scripture seems dull and dry to one who is attempting to feed the flock, it is because the minister's heart has not been revived by it. Having failed to take heed to the need of his own soul, and to feed upon the word, he cannot present that word to the flock of God so that their souls will be fed. A peculiarly sensitive spiritual power dwells within the word of God. It must be received within the heart and transformed into the life by being personified in the speaker, so that what he speaks is his life, or it will not reach the hearts of his hearers to feed their souls.
It is difficult to see how one can feed a church with spiritual food unless he himself has partaken of that food. Preachers are not one kind of flesh, and the people another. We are all born in sin, and have been mutilated and scarred by it. The grip of sin is terrific on most men, preachers as well as laymen. What breaks the hold of Satan on the layman will have the same tendency to break that hold on the preacher, and vice versa. The food that makes a preacher strong will have the same effect upon the lay brother.
Because they have been ordained to preach the gospel, some may think that they have divine credentials guaranteeing that they are qualified to feed the church. But if ordination is assurance of grace and ability to feed the flock, why is the exhortation given, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves"? Paul certainly seemed to think that an elder must take heed to himself as well as to his flock. His command is very emphatic: "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock."
Many preach above their hearers, seeming to wish to impress the audience with their superior learning, with their gifts in rhetoric and oratory, and with themselves, but leave unfed the souls for whom they are responsible. It is not learning, nor rhetoric, nor logic that the preacher is to seek to display. The times are too serious for such travesty. The most important business in the whole world is preaching the gospel, and persuading men to accept Christ as their Saviour. Men who hope to "feed the flock" must prepare for that work by communion with the Infinite God.
Before Calvary lies Gethsemane. It is "in the garden" that battles are won. People are eager to hear the word from the lips of men who have been with their Lord. The presence of God makes holy ground. When Moses was about to approach the burning bush, he was commanded to put off his shoes. He was in the presence of the Lord, and the very desert about Horeb was holy. To gain access to the presence of God makes the seeker put away sin; for no man is fitted to undertake to feed the flock with known sin in his heart.
The flock of God must eat spiritual food; they cannot survive without it. Christ was very insistent on this point. Three times He commanded Peter to feed His sheep and His lambs. Peter never forgot this great charge. When he wrote his letters to the churches, he said to the elders: "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock." 1 Peter 5:2, 3.
Here again we have the exhortation to the worker to feed the flock. It is evident that God will hold the shepherd responsible for feeding the church of Christ. Peter placed himself on a level with the elders. He claimed no superiority because of having been with Jesus; he asked for no special honors for the office he held, but made himself one with the other shepherds who were overseers of the flock. Peter might have claimed much. He had been assured of a kingdom in the world to come.
He had been with Christ, and had received from Him a special charge to feed the flock. Though he witnessed the sufferings and death of Christ and knew of the resurrection of Christ as no other elder did, though he had traveled with Christ and obeyed His spoken commands, yet he was but one with others who must feed the flock of God.
Love for the flock under his charge will ever be the underlying and overmastering motive of service in the faithful undershepherd, following the example of Christ, who said: "I am the good Shepherd: the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." "I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. . .
I lay down My life for the sheep."
What solemnity, what earnestness, what a laying aside of every trivial thought and word, should characterize those who would feed the flock of God! To be willing to lay down one's life to save the flock precludes jesting and frivolity; it calls for all the hidden resources of character to be found in a study of God's word and communion with Him. Every failure to feed the flock is an injury to the soul of the minister as well as a definite—and it may be an eternal—loss to the flock. For the flock of God must have spiritual food, or perish.
I. H. E.
