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Is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is based on the scripture from Matthew chapter 22 verse 34 Through 40 our sermon is entitled everything you always wanted to know about a minister, but were afraid to ask He was preaching his first sermon after getting out of seminary and he was preaching it in the first church which he was called to serve and

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So he had memorized the entire message. He stepped into the pulpit and began with these words behold I come and Then he couldn't remember what he was supposed to say

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So he thought to himself I'll repeat it with added emphasis and maybe it'll snap into my mind and I will know which way to go from there and So he said again to the congregation behold I come

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And he still couldn't remember what he was going to say next So he thought I I'll try it one more time and if I don't get at this time, then I'll have to go back to my study and get my manuscript and so hammering the pulpit as hard as he could and

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Thundering out the words. He said behold I come and He hit the pulpit so hard that it toppled off the front of the chancel and he landed in the lap of a lady in the first row Well, he got up he was ashamed he was embarrassed he was humiliated

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She looked at him. She said son. It's not necessary for you to apologize After all you warned me three times This morning I want to ask not who has come But what is come?

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What is a minister? The Bible from its very earliest pages speaks of a special people of God They are sometimes called Kleros from which we get our word clergy they are sometimes called Laos from which we get our word laity and

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Both of these words are applied to all of God's people in this biblical sense Then all of you are not only lay people you are also clergymen But there is a third group

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That God sets aside for particular ministry the task of ministry You see an example of this When our Lord established that company of 11 disciples

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To carry on in ministry to others after he was gone the fact that Jesus established this group is What gives it dignity? the church does not create the ministry and

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The ministry does not create the church They were both created by God The ministry as distinct from the Kleros and the Laos is Not an office

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It's not a caste It's not a profession It is a sacred call Calvin called it the nerve of the church

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It is not built in any way shape or form upon the merit of the one called It is only the authority and the dignity of the one who calls God Who gives any authority or dignity to the position?

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Now today I would like to think with you about the ministry And I'd like to share with you some things you may have wanted to know but have never asked and I'm also going to share with you some things. You probably don't want to know

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But need to ask about and I want to use as my rubric That beloved verse of Scripture, which I just read in your hearing Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart with all thy soul with all thy mind This is the first and great commandment and the second is like unto it

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Thou shalt love thy neighbor as Thyself now, of course that word of Scripture applies to all Christians, but I want to apply it particularly this morning to the ministry I

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Want that to be our perspective? First then we are to love the Lord our God Now most people when they think of the love of God think of it in terms of gratitude They are very very appreciative of what God has done for them

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And so they love him when Paul writes we love because he first loved us He is illustrating this kind of grateful love for God if you go to a testimony meeting most often The testimony will be about something that God has done in an individual's life and in response to that this individual Praises God you find this kind of love of God expressed all throughout the Psalms and there is nothing

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That is wrong with it at all But it is very elementary and it is very immature and That is because it has about it a certain degree of selfishness It is aroused you see by benefits received

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Now the next level of love for God is Excellence and This is when someone loves God because of the glory of God's being

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Glory be to thee. Oh God How majestic is thy name in all the earth now, this is better than a prayer of gratitude this is an adoration of the splendor and the majesty and the holiness and the justice and the goodness and the truth and the love of God and

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That is beautiful But it is still not the highest form of love because ultimately it rests upon reason and In as much as we are all sinners and this affects our reasoning as it affects all of our lives

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It is not a pure love Now the most advanced stage of love for God is what we might call this morning adoration It is to reflect in oneself The love which is spread into oneself

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By the Holy Spirit now you you see examples of that here on this earth Consider for a moment a woman who has a tragically subnormal child The child has no senses. The child will never be able to speak. The child will never be able to walk

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The child just lies there Now there is not much gratitude for that kind of tragic situation that baby will be a baby always and will be a burden not principally a blessing and

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Certainly one cannot admire this baby because of its excellence It is short many of the most elementary things that a child has to have But still That mother loves that baby with all her heart

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And this is because her love is not built on becauses She doesn't love that child because of this or because of that The greatest kind of love you see is the love which has no becauses When we just love God for God

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The heart soars And It's this kind of love that every clergyman seeks

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to develop in his or her own life Now, I know there are some people listening to me now Who consider this to be too mystical? They say it's preposterous

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All I can say in response is That you never know what this is really like until you experience it Some of you who are seated in this room I know because of what you have told me know the sweetness of this kind of love and

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For the others there is no proof that I can offer But the truth about What I'm offering is this that old woman who went about with a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other and

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Who said to all who would listen would God with this bucket of water? I could put out the flames of hell and With this torch that I could burn heaven into ashes. Why? So that men might love God for his own sake Not because of heaven not because of hell but because of God

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Unfortunately this desire on the part of the minister ofttimes creates problems and it does because There are a certain number of individuals in almost every congregation who believe

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That the first assignment of a minister is to love them Not God All they might mouth the other phrase but really in their hearts they see his primary love as

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Directed to them and they also expect his first service to be for them And these kinds of people manifest this in many ways You can see it in the way. They judge the program of the man or the personality of the man even their pulpit prejudices indicate that they want a

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minister who principally loves and serves them and It's very very tempting For the minister to do that Because it keeps the boat from rocking

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But the clergyman must not do it He must remember instead Hugh Latimer the great English preacher Who was to speak one morning before royalty and a friend of his said to him Latimer

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Be careful what you preached today For the king of England is in the congregation to which Latimer instantly replied I Shall be careful about what I preach today

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because the king of kings is in the congregation Astonishing pressures can be brought to bear upon a pastor But if he loves God first and if he serves God first

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He will be strengthened in the task, which is his Now the second thing that this verse says is that we are to love our neighbor All of us like to be loved And I think all of us if we're going to be honest about it will admit

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That there is many times a lack of love evidenced in the church Oftentimes battles begin within congregations and almost invariably

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Whether he has anything to do one side with one side or the other The minister gets caught in the crossfire He gets caught in the middle of the conflict Now in the middle of that conflict he wants to love everyone

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But at the same time He is only going to be able to like certain people Love is a principle

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Liking someone is an emotion a Pagan will do something loving for the individual he likes a Christian will do something loving even for the person that he doesn't like and none of us Are such Dale Carnegie's that everybody likes us or that we like everybody

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What I'm saying is We all need to have some friends We need to have beside the love we have for one another in Christ. We need to have some Who are allowed to like us?

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intimately Before whom we can become vulnerable and like them in the same way It's strange But in this it would be a good thing if the church was more like the Congress of the United States

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our congressmen will stand up and call each other names all day long and then they go out tonight together in the evening and play bridge together or go to this party or that banquet and All that has happened through the day is forgotten Just the opposite happens in the church

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You very rarely hear anyone in the church meeting calling someone a name The words that are used are not so blunt but those words are

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Not the only words that are said Most of the words that are said are said after the meeting is over and a minister has to deal with that and

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He is mightily strengthened in dealing with that If there are some people to whom he can go in utter nakedness and know That because they like him They will help him and not hurt him

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy used to recite a little four-line verse Bullfight critics ranked in rows crowd the enormous plaza full But only one is there who knows and he is the one who fights the bull And

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That's the position in which the minister finds himself and it's a much easier position If in the midst of his loving all you will understand that he's got to have some Who are especially close? Some who come to him as his intimate friends do not resent that

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Rejoice in that The third thing that the verse calls us to is to love ourselves thou shalt love thy neighbor as thou dost love thyself Now this is not a call to pride or to selfishness Rather it is a a call to self-acceptance

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It is coming to a greater empathy with yourself So that you can have a greater empathy and sympathy with others a weak self Cannot be of much help to most people Now again this truth applies to all of us

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But look particularly at the ministry and let me just take one example Out of the assignment that a minister has take the matter of his loving himself By his continued study His careful hours at his desk

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learning The minister who does not keep up to date Who does not progress? with advancing knowledge

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That minister to that degree will weaken himself If he's been out of seminary for ten years and is speaking to the congregation out of the same pastoral psychology and

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the same theology and the same Archaeology that he learned a decade ago Well such a minister is not quite safe if he's been out of seminary for 20 years and

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He has not studied and he doesn't know the latest biblical evidence And he cannot use those techniques which have been developed to better help people in the counseling chamber If he hasn't studied that for 20 years, he is definitely unsafe and if he has been out of the ministry out of the seminary for 30 years and

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Has not done these things continued every day to shine more light

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Upon what he understands his ministry God's Word his task to be Then such a one is positively dangerous Study Recreation

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quiet good music All of these things must be part of a minister's life else He becomes like a goldfish in a bowl

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He goes around in circles He darts here and there without purpose Whenever a finger approaches the bowl he jumps back or what's even worse? Whenever a finger approaches the bowl he follows that finger wherever it goes

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You see the truth is that many clergy are Not able to stand up to the strain of the ministry they crack and they cave in and

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They do it most often Because they haven't spent enough time Loving themselves It's a fellow back here in the East who decided he wanted to become a rancher

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so he bought a spread out in the West and he took his wife and his two sons out there and About two years later one of his Eastern friends came to visit and he took him out and he showed him the fences and he showed him the green meadows and the pastures and the Rills and brooks showed him all these things and the man said this is a beautiful piece of land that you have here

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But you were going to raise cattle. Where are the cattle? I don't see any cattle Well, the man said I Wanted to call the ranch the circle star But my wife wanted to call it the lazy s

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One of my boys wanted to call it the B bar B and The other one wanted to call it the C squared and You see by the time we got all four brands on a heifer that heifer would be burned to ashes

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Well, that's what happens when a minister tries to wear too many brands He burns out He needs devotional times in which he can practice the highest love the heart can handle He needs to love all but to be permitted

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to have those whom he specially likes and to like him and He needs to serve himself That way making himself worth more to God and also worth more to his people The minister who does these things

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No matter what attack might come his direction Will be able to stand fast So in just three weeks you're going to have a new pastor I'd like to make some suggestions to you concerning him

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Remember his first task is to love God Not you Remember that his primary service is to serve God and not you After these things

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He will love and serve you and in that service He is going to need those who are specially close about him those with whom his personality meshes So allow him to have those kinds of friendships You see he's going to be told secrets

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That he cannot share with others in a court of law. They couldn't force him to share those secrets and It's very hard to carry that all by yourself. He is going to be told of deep and scarlet sins and They will be presented to him in such a lurid way that he is subject to awesome temptation He is going to be called upon to be a strength to others

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But he must also have a great strength within himself And there will be times no matter what When he will be wounded Give him time to heal

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I believe that the ministry Is the grandest of all callings and That's the reason every year I

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Renew my vows I go off to some place apart and Not with a smile Or with laughter

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But slowly and Clearly and Alone I make my promises to God once more

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And so do others Who wear these robes These are some things I Thought you might want to know about the minister and hesitate to ask

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(Silence) I Wear this to God And

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Clearly and Alone I Make my promises to God once more And so do others who wear these robes

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These are some things I Thought you might want to know about the minister and hesitate to ask Let us pray O God we thank thee for this new marriage between pastor and people

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We pray that it will be richly blessed by thee That there will be love and strength and beauty and truth in every hour and day of it But father if in thy providence there are some stressful times Some difficult and hard moments

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Then Keep thy servant Close to thee in devotion Close to thee and to others in love

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Close to those friends who can help him bear his burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ and Close to those things which will make him stronger in mind soul and spirit May this be a beautiful and a fruitful marriage We pray it with all the earnestness of which we are capable in

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Jesus name Amen [BLANK_AUDIO]