SHEPHERDING
E. C. Burr
1 Peter 5: 1–4; Acts 20: 28–31; Psalm 23: 1–6
It will be clear to the brethren from the scriptures that have been read that I would like to say a word about the service of shepherding. What I would like to get to, as the Lord helps, is the sense in which that service has only a positive aspect. We are familiar with the service of the Lord Jesus as Shepherd in, I suppose, more than one setting and each of us has had the experience I trust of recognising Him as the One who came after us when we were far from God and brought us back. Whether the sense in Luke 15 is of a man having a hundred sheep of whom one goes astray just for the moment and He brings that one back, or whether it has in view men generally, and ourselves as away from God, in either setting we would all have experienced this service of the Lord Jesus as Shepherd.
The presentation of Christ as Shepherd in the preaching of the gospel is one that is generally calculated to touch the affections and hearts, especially of the saints, and it has done marvellous work too in the souls of unbelievers; there seems to be something almost ingrained in man that finds the presentation of a shepherd something to which he must respond. Although Jesus was, as I suppose, drawing on the day-by-day experiences and knowledge of those to whom He was speaking, the way in which in each of the gospels He brings out the thought of a shepherd is interesting. In some sense the presentation in the synoptic gospels is different from that in John, but the thought of the shepherd is there, and I think this would justify one in thinking that that service is one for which there is an innate requirement in the heart of man.
That there is such a requirement in relation to the operations of One who would go out and gather souls to Himself in the present day is clear to us all. We only have to look around on mankind and see people given up to their own inclinations and lusts, given up to the surrender of practically every moral governing element which has ever come in, to see how much men need the pursuit, and the tender pursuit, of One who will shepherd them and bring them back to their right place in regard to Himself. Man as away from God is a creature whose first need, above any other, is to be brought back to God, and we ourselves have experienced the service in grace of the Lord Jesus in coming after us in that shepherdly character, and laying us on His own shoulders and rejoicing. You would feel that it is us who should rejoice, but it is touching that He rejoices as He lays it on His own shoulder and brings it home. As one of the hymns says—
“None of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed,
Nor how dark the night that the Lord passed through
Ere He found the—sheep that was lost”
The sheep that are lost do not know, but we who through grace have been the subject of His work have some impression of the darkness of the night that the Lord passed through. Not that we can enter into it ourselves; there were three hours of darkness over the whole land from the sixth to the ninth hour and ‘none of the ransomed’ have ever known what entered into those three hours save in the consequences for them in the expression of the grace of God, and to His glory. Therefore, we have that basis in our souls for considering what His service as a Shepherd toward us is.
Then in the processes and the continuance of our christian life, this service as a Shepherd is one that we have continually needed. How often we have not only been tempted to go astray, but how often we have gone astray. If we were among the hundred sheep, how often we have been the one who has gone astray. It is best to think of yourself like that. It is often easier to think of the whole hundred sheep going astray and to say, Well of course we were all wrong then; but there is much more soul gain in saying that I was the sheep that went astray and that in His grace and His mercy He came after me and found me, and He brought me back into His own way. And thank God He did, and that that service of shepherding continues down to the present moment.
In one sense that service has a negative aspect. What is protective often has a negative aspect. What involves the searching for one who is going astray necessarily involves a negative aspect. It is discovering persons in circumstances that are untoward and unsuitable, indeed circumstances in which they never ought to have been, and the intervention of the Shepherd is in order to save us and bring us back. Thank God that we experience constantly those delivering services of the Lord Jesus.
He does not upbraid us for where He finds us. The introduction of His own glory as a Saviour into circumstances into which we may have fallen by our own error is surely lesson enough to us not again to get into circumstances that compromise the glory that is His. And the tenderness with which He draws near to us, and the expense to which He is put of labour and of effort in order to recover us, should surely be word enough to us not to go astray again; and yet, again we go astray. One hesitates to say that again we will go astray, because we count on the grace of the Lord, and on the diligence of the brethren to preserve themselves, to keep themselves so that the evil one does not touch them, and to keep themselves in the love of God, so as to put less demand on that recovering service of the Lord Jesus as He would come after us in that shepherdly way.
Yet, if we need it, He will still come. What grace there is in all His services of this kind. No wonder that Peter refers to Him in the scripture that we have read as “the chief shepherd”. He is also spoken of as “the great shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews 13: 20), but “when the chief shepherd is manifested ye shall receive the unfading crown of glory.” Peter surely has Him in view as the great Shepherd, but he also has Him in view as the chief Shepherd, and His service is unrelaxing, and careful, and continuous. Each of us, beloved, will do well to be simple about these services of the Lord Jesus. It is never contemplated in Scripture that the wandering sheep finds its own, way back. It always has to be gone after, always has to be looked for, always has to be searched out, just like you and me; we have to be searched out, but His grace is sufficient and it will yet be sufficient, and I say again, thank God that it will.
These things necessarily have their negative bearing as related to things that are unsuitable and untoward. Now the principal thing that I wish to touch on in the two scriptures I have read from Peter and in the Acts are on the one hand shepherding the flock of God and on the other hand shepherding the assembly of God. From one point of view we might say that both these things were the same—in one sense they are. They comprise the same persons, and the flock of God, I suppose, is Peter thinking of the sheep in the way that Jesus speaks of them in John 10. The Father gave them to Christ. “My Father who has given them to me is greater than all” (John 10: 29). That is, the flock of God is delivered into the hand of Christ. With what care He looks after it. But the flock of God seems to me to be presented, both in this scripture and in the Acts, and indeed in John 10, as requiring special protection, especially from what is external to it.
According to Acts 20, it is susceptible to the depredations of grievous wolves who will come in, and men that shall arise “from among your own selves”. It does not exactly say that the men that arise from among your own selves are part of the flock of God, or part of the assembly of God. They arise “from among your own selves”, which seems to suggest the mixed condition which Paul was able to anticipate even as he spoke to these elders of Ephesus. The flock of God seems to me to require special activity in protection and in preservation from those who would come either from outside or inside in order to make attacks on it and if possible take the sheep away, although that is not possible because “No one can seize out of the hand of my Father”, John 10: 29; whereas the assembly of God, I would like to suggest, is something that is not susceptible to that kind of thing, but needs to be shepherded in view of positive things which are before it.
Now, we have had experience ourselves, of course, and we shall have such experience to the end, that grievous wolves will come in, and their intention is not to spare the flock. Even though it is God’s flock, grievous wolves will come in. One in some sense lacks language to speak of the activities of the enemy, but sometimes one even thinks of the impertinence of the enemy who would seek to seize those who belong to the flock of God in order that he may ravage them, and that he may kill them, as the Lord says of the thief in John 10—he “comes not but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy” (John 10: 10). You wonder at the impertinence of the enemy who would seek to take what belongs to God and has God’s own name upon it, and to kill it and to destroy it, but such is the enemy with whom we have to do!
One of the things to which we need to be recovered, if we are not already, is that we have to have profound regard for the astuteness and wiliness of the enemy with whom we have to do.
Satan is not a person to be mocked by those who are still in conditions of flesh in which they may become subject to his attacks, at any time. We have to do with a skilful, and powerful, and hostile foe, and one who never relaxes in his hostility to what is of God. If therefore there is the flock of God, there will be the one who goes about even as a roaring lion and he seeks whom he may devour; but he may come also as an angel of light and his intention is just the same. There is a service of shepherding that is needed to protect the flock of God against the external activities of the enemy, and even from what may arise, as Paul says, “from among your own selves”.
It is a grievous thing and is, of course, an indication of the breakdown that has come in in the profession of Christ’s name, that “from among your own selves” such men might arise. It does us good to meet continually the challenge which Jesus puts to His disciples when He instituted the Supper, to which they each of them responded “Is it I?”, Matthew 26: 25; Mark 14: 20. We have to judge in our own hearts the tendency, when Jesus says “One of you shall deliver me up”, to say, Well, one was never too sure about So-and-so. None of the disciples at the institution of the Supper said that. Each of them took the challenge of Christ directly home to himself, “Is it I, Rabbi?”, and if we meet Paul’s comment that “from among your own selves” men shall arise up of a character that will not spare the flock, the point for us to begin with is, “Is it I?”
How much sorrow might have been saved if we had been ready squarely to face that question in the presence of the constant, even if unspoken, challenge of Jesus that there were those who would betray Him, and say to ourselves, “Is it I?”, and then to find that, if it was I, there was the grace that had given His blood, “shed for many for the remission of sins”, that could release us even from the tendency to betray and to deliver Him up. But “from among your own selves” is to remind us continually that we need to examine our selves so that if externally we are in the number who make up the flock, yet at the same time we are not characterised by anything which is of a kind that is going to betray the Lord or bring in damage in the company of His own.
These things, beloved, relate to the flock of God and it is clearly a susceptible entity. It is something, you might say, that the Lord will protect, and Jesus says in John 10 that no one can seize them out of the hand of His Father. Thank God that that is true, but nevertheless there is a relentless enemy who is against what subsists in the flock the whole time, and the service of shepherd care is needed if the brethren are to be preserved from it. Let us, beloved, be as Peter exhorts—and he speaks to the elders just as Paul speaks to the elders in Acts 20. I venture to speak to the elders myself this morning, that there might be never neglected the service of shepherd care for the flock of God, which is going to anticipate the activities of the enemy, and in anticipating them is going to forestall them. If it sees any element arising up “from among your own selves” that is not going to spare the flock, it will meet it head-on before it has time to do any damage.
The service of a shepherd is essentially a self-sacrificial service, and the service of elderhood is self-sacrificial too. There is no question, as far as I understand it, of anyone who takes on the office of an elder ever sparing themselves in the service which they have undertaken.
Perhaps that is why so few of us are characteristically ready to commit ourselves to that service, because it is a service from which there is no turning back. There is no time off; there is never an easier way. If a situation is arising that demands the activity of elderhood in shepherding, then the elder must be there and he must be active, or else he is betraying his trust and his office. We have many respected elder brethren amongst us to whom perhaps we might well have listened in the past, but they too have their responsibility to ensure that the service of shepherding is continually going on in relation to those that the Lord has brought within the sphere of their own care.
Let me just add this, that no brother is too prominent, and no brother knows too much to need the service of a shepherd. It is no good thinking, Well so-and-so serves and takes meetings, and we listen to him, and therefore I can leave him to himself while get on with something else. You are doing damage to that brother if you do not extend the service of elderhood and shepherding to every brother and sister that comes within your cognisance. The service of elderhood has to embrace everybody. How often many of us who serve—and some of us who serve are still moderately young—have been thankful for an admonitory word by some older man who in grace was just able to keep us on the way, and just able to show us that there might be a tendency in a certain direction, or danger of such-and-such a thing.
What that service is doing is the shepherd care which is working for the ultimate benefit of all the brethren, because if those who serve allow themselves to suffer damage the consequence will immediately be that the remainder of the brethren will suffer damage. Beloved brethren, we have suffered too much already through damage to those who serve and there are few enough of us left for us to be willing to countenance any further damage to the brethren even through those who serve. Therefore, let the elder brethren ensure that they are committing themselves to this service of shepherding, which as I say is a sacrificial service, but it has in view the protection of the flock from those who from the outside, or even from the gathered company, might do anything which is going to damage that company which is so precious to God.
The service of shepherding according to Peter and according to Paul, requires that those who undertake it become models to the flock.
Peter says that explicitly, that they are to be models (see 1 Peter 5: 3). Paul says, “Take heed therefore to yourselves”. Therefore, if this service is to be carried on, it is one that first requires—that I have carefully shepherded myself in order that I may be available actively for gain to the rest of the brethren. We ought to realise constantly, beloved, even in the light of the smallness to which we have been reduced (and that ought to accentuate it to us) that what remains is extremely precious to Christ, and I owe it all the care that I can give it and so do you; whether you are a brother or a sister you owe what remains the greatest care that you can give to anything, just as Christ loved the assembly and delivered Himself up for it (see Ephesians 5: 25), so you should be loving what remains in committal to what is of assembly character, and characteristically you should be delivering yourself up for it.
It will involve encountering the thieves and the wolves; things in yourself, such as “of necessity”, or of “base gain”, or of “lording it over your possessions”; because the desire to secure a place is one of the most subtle things that operates in any of us. But the service of the shepherd is intended to have negated all those things in order that the beloved saints as the flock of God may be fully protected.
The flock of God seems to me to be presented, both by Peter and by Paul, as something that is peculiarly susceptible to the activities of the enemy. The Lord does not say that the wolves will not prevail against it. He does not say that in regard to the flock, though no one can take them out of the Father’s hand and they are protected in that sense and will go right through, but what is needed is men who in the spirit of David will say, “There came a lion, and also a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock” (1 Samuel 17: 34). That is, in David’s view it was the flock of God. He took the lion and the bear, and he smote them, and delivered the lamb out of their mouth. Beloved, this kind of service is still needed. It is essentially in many respects a negative service that of protecting the brethren against these external things.
Many of us, I think, however tend to feel that the service of shepherding is just of that kind, that the shepherd service involves that there may be straying sheep and we will go after them, wounded sheep and we will do our best to heal them, lost sheep and we will try to see if we can find them, needs of one kind and another and we will seek to meet them. All these things the shepherd has to do. We think also, as I have just been saying, that the flock is exposed and needs protection and care, and we will do that as well. I have wondered whether we are not inclined to confine our thoughts of what shepherding includes to those protective services, needed though they are; but it seems to me that the shepherding the assembly of God, as Paul says in Acts 20, “Take heed therefore to yourselves, and to all the flock, wherein the Holy Spirit has set you as overseers, to shepherd the assembly of God, which he has purchased with the blood of his own” is something further.
In the assembly of God, which He has purchased with the blood of His own, there is not a single grievous wolf. There is no man that can arise from among that company who can speak perverted things and draw away the disciples after him. The assembly of God is an entity that God has put His own name on, but He has purchased it with the blood of His own and every entity in it is there on the basis of having been redeemed by that blood. It is therefore completely secure, completely protected; it is an entity which is entire in itself and which is incorruptible. “The assembly of God”, I believe, is an incorruptible entity.
I was therefore struck by what was said in the reading as to the substantiality of what there was in Corinth, where there was the assembly of God, where the testimony of the Christ had been confirmed in persons. The testimony of the Christ is not confirmed in grievous wolves or men who draw away disciples after themselves, but in people who belong to this entity which is going right through, which Jesus speaks of as “my assembly”. “The assembly of God” and “my assembly”, while spoken of under these different titles, are, I believe, the same thing. Now, if we think of “the assembly of God” or of “my assembly” as Jesus speaks of it in Matthew’s gospel, we see immediately that it is something, as He says, against which the gates of hades will never prevail—“I will build my assembly, and hades’ gates shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16: 18).
It is in that sense, therefore, something that, while the service of protection goes on in the flock over which the Holy Spirit has set certain as overseers, subsists as that which can go right through no matter what is brought against it. It therefore does not need, in that sense, to be greatly concerned about what is going on around it. If there are the enemies, there is a table furnished in their presence, and the service of the Shepherd is to lead the assembly of God, that entity which is totally consistent with God’s own thoughts, to that furnished table in the presence of the enemy. The Shepherd does not turn aside to describe what the gates of hades are; He does not turn aside to describe the enemies, to analyse them, to look for solutions for them; He takes the flock to the furnished table in the presence of the enemies.
This, beloved, is an aspect of shepherding which is only positive. It has no other aspect than what is positive, and I believe that that is the aspect of shepherding which belongs to the assembly of God. The assembly of God is protected by Christ; it is protected by the Father, but it is protected by Christ, so that as it rests in Him, it is already at rest in regard to every external thing that may come upon it. You may say that this is an abstract presentation of the assembly; is it not here broken down and scattered? Sorrowfully it is, but nevertheless there is that entity in integrity which is going right through for Christ’s glory—and which subsists now for Christ’s glory, and the Shepherd will see that that entity is fed and treated and cared for in relation to the glory of Christ, and ultimately its coming out having the glory of God, rather than being occupied with enemies, and breakdown, and sorrow and failure on the way.
Therefore, in Psalm 23 there is no question of failure of any kind. You may say, Does it not need the rod and the staff to comfort it? Yes, but beloved, it does not say, Thy rod and thy staff discipline me. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me”, that is how the assembly of God is cared for as “Jehovah is my shepherd”. I know that I am applying this psalm in extension of ways in which it may have been spoken about before. It relates very much to the comfort which the individual saint may acquire through the shepherd care of the Lord Jesus.
There is an aspect too in which it relates to the position of the Lord Jesus Himself as here and as going through death. Mr. Darby says somewhere that it relates to a dying Christ, and you think of that, and read this psalm as the breathings of Christ Himself in relation to God in all the untoward circumstances in which He was, having even to encounter the valley of the shadow of death itself, having to be in a world which is itself the valley of the shadow of death, but having to go into that actual valley Himself. You can see what comfort He found in His soul in God, save in relation to those three hours of darkness to which I have already referred. And, as I have said, many many saints have found immense comfort in this psalm.
Everyone has probably heard of the occasion when some great actor or speaker was invited to recite the psalm and he stood up and recited it perfectly, word perfect, elocution excellent, and nobody was stirred; then they found an old soul who stood up after him and recited it, and everyone was moved right through their being; and they said, Why is this? and she said, Well, he knows the psalm and I know the Shepherd. That is all the difference, and many have found immense comfort through knowing the Shepherd.
But I venture to apply this to the way in which the assembly of God might feel that God Himself was taking care of it in the present circumstances of testimony, so that immediately the assembly of God will say, “I shall not want”. Certainly the assembly of God will never want to the end. There is a flow of truth, and of light, and of power, and of grace coming into that entity continually. When she appears in her manifestation, having the glory of God, how has that been acquired? Has it been acquired suddenly and in heaven, or has it been acquired in the constant day-by-day experience that was drawing from God all the time? “I shall not want”, and every day the assembly of God finding that there was never any need, but a constant flow of glory from God in whatever aspect it took, in grace displayed, or in the truth known, or in the power of God known in it—all these things there.
“I shall not want”.
Beloved, are, we shepherding our local assemblies in this spirit? Are we shepherding them in the spirit that they will not want? If they are not going to want, it does not involve that I sit there and say a lot. It involves that a channel is made into the local assembly and kept open for the supply of things from God Himself by the Spirit and conducted in the power of the headship of Christ, and that is how the assembly finds that it shall not want. It is an odd thing to say, but I feel sometimes that we come to the meeting having read too much. Especially perhaps with typical scriptures, we have books on our shelves that, to use an expression, tell us all about them, and we come with it all in our minds and during the meeting the Spirit says something, but it was not in what we had previously read and we go on with what we have previously read.
Beloved, let us honour the ministries the Lord has given; let us study them, let us give ourselves up to the study of them, let us be more devoted and more committed to them. Mr. Stoney, in a day as far back as his, was lamenting that when he was a young man, young men used to spend time over the Scriptures, and they used to sit down and write notes about them, and read and reflect, and Mr. Stoney in his day was sorrowing that that kind of thing had departed. We are a good many years after Mr. Stoney’s day, and one does not see very many young men going privately with notebooks to record what they have gained from the Scriptures.
Perhaps as we were having Tuesday night, there could be more progress achieved if there were more devotedness in study of that kind. But, beloved, never let your study get in the way of the current experience of the headship of Christ and the movements of the Spirit. Let us honour the ministry we have been given, but if even that gets in the way of the current activity of the Spirit it is not the most profitable thing for the moment. The sense of the assembly as ‘not wanting’ is not on the basis of acquired knowledge from the past but on the flow of the truth for the moment in the power of the Spirit of God and under Christ as Head.
And He then makes us to lie down. Are we conscious of the world around us? Are we saying that all around us is the tumult and the noise, what is referred to in Job as the tumult of the city? (Job 39: 7). Is that all around us? No, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters”. These are areas into which the Shepherd leads the assembly of God where she is perfectly and completely at rest, where there is nothing to interfere with enjoyment, where no cry and no struggle ever comes up. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters”. The brethren know when they are there and they know when they are not, but have we the capacity to be a shepherd of the assembly of God?
If you were an Ephesian elder you would have gone back feeling a sense of your responsibility, and you would have wondered, Where can I get instruction about shepherding the assembly of God? You would have prayed about it and you would have counted on the Spirit about it, but I suggest to you that in Psalm 23 you would have found an instruction book all ready.
Shepherd the assembly of God; lead it beside still waters, take it into green pastures, take it where things are fresh and where things are sustained in the power of the Spirit. The man that is in Psalm 23 will recognise the man that is in Psalm 1 straight away. They both live in the same area. The sheep are in the green pasture, and they are saying to themselves, What is that great tree over there? That is, “the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked” (Psalm 1: 1) and so on. As you lie down in green pastures, in this shepherdly care, Christ in His distinctiveness in manhood is discerned to be in those same circumstances too.
His leaf does not fade, His roots are in these waters, and the assembly is led there. Shepherd the assembly of God; take it into this area.
There is an aspect of shepherding, beloved, which has only a positive bearing. Let us get into it. If there is one yearning among the brethren at the present time, it is that after all the conflict and the sorrow and the battle through which they have been they might be nourished in an area where things are at peace, and shepherding the assembly of God will take them into that area. No shepherd ever led a flock into a battle. Certainly not! Even Jacob was careful about a thing like that. You would put the flock in green pastures and beside still waters. If you have to go to the battle, what have you done with the flock? Oh, you have left them with a keeper. Where did you leave them? Did you leave them in the wilderness? Oh no, I think the safest place to leave them is in green pastures and by still waters.
Then, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”.
Now beloved, to the assembly of God the world is the valley of the shadow of death. That is why its innate power of life leads it to desire to be separate from the order of things that is here, and even though it walks through the valley of that shadow it fears no evil,
“for thou art with me”. Let the gates of hades come—“I will fear no evil”. Have you led your local brethren in a way that they fear no evil? I would love to be able to have any part in London in leading the brethren in such a way that they fear no evil. How is it done? It involves that there is a power to meet evil in yourself but, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me”. Beloved, if the Lord is there, no evil is to be feared. Therefore, what is the shepherd doing? He is taking the assembly of God this way, but he is conducting it in the sense that it is separate from the world which is characterised by the shadow of death and keeping it in this area where no evil is feared, where the sheep are kept at rest because one has already met in himself the power of evil that may arise.
His rod and his staff comfort them. It does not say they are for discipline. We often feel that they are for discipline, but the shepherd has a rod and a staff in order that he may the most effectively guide the sheep in the way in which he wants them to go. And then, as I said,
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies”. The enemies of the assembly are hades’ gates; do they come up? What does He say? Does he say, Now we have got a great conflict on, we had better all get to battle positions? No, He furnishes you with a table, He continues to supply you with food, and with the best food, the best things. Think of what the spouse lays up for her beloved in the Song of Songs, “I have laid them up for thee, my beloved”, but can the spouse lay up for the Bridegroom anything to compare with what the Bridegroom will lay up for the spouse?
He furnishes the table here in the presence of the enemy. We are not required, like the man in Acts 16, to lay the table ourselves. He has, furnished it in the presence of enemies. Where do we get a sense of the table being furnished as we do at the Supper? Once the Lord has come in, beloved, are you in any sense conscious that the world around you is at enmity with you because you stand for the One that the world has rejected? No, if He has come in your only concern is with the table He is furnishing.
Let us not be afraid of hades’ gates. Let us have a right regard for them, let us not be intimidated by them, however; let us be led to the table that He furnishes in the presence of the enemies, and with our head anointed and our cup running over. What an experience for the assembly of God—her cup runs over. It knows it is the anointed vessel; “Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over”. Does the cup run over in every local assembly that is here? For the assembly of God, as shepherded by one who had taken the character of Paul in Acts 20—the cup will run over all the: time. If you have announced to you all the counsel of God, can your cup contain that? That is what Paul had done, as he told those elders (Acts 20: 27). Would not your cup run over with that? Is not, therefore, the counsel of God the best thing with which to feed the assembly of God? Is it not the best kind of food for them, the most nourishing, and the most powerful?
Beloved, I am impressed with the fact that there is an aspect of shepherding the assembly of God which has no aspect other than what is entirely positive. Let us get the gain of it. She says, if I may apply this, “Surely, goodness and loving-kindness shall follow me all the days of my life”. As long as the testimony is needed here, and as long as Christ needs the assembly in these adverse conditions, it will be here and He will be there to protect it and to follow it with goodness and loving-kindness. Not following it to pick up stragglers and strays, not following it to say, Well, what you did here was right and what you did there was wrong. No, goodness and loving-kindness follow it all the days of its life.
Let that be, beloved, the character of what is enjoyed in the assembly of God so far as it is known by us. The injunction of Paul in Acts 20 was “Shepherd the assembly of God”. I just have the impression that if our local assemblies, as representative in any degree of the assembly of God, were led this way, you would find, as the spouse says in the end of the Song of Songs, “Then was I in his eyes as one that findeth peace” (Song of Songs 8: 10). It was arrived at another way in Acts 9. The Lord Himself dealt with the external opposition, then the assemblies were edified, and through the comfort of the Holy Spirit had peace, that is, the Spirit was there carrying out the service that Jesus attributed to Him in John 14, 15 and 16. But “Then was I in his eyes as one that findeth peace”. I am sure that is the assembly of God as shepherded by those who understand what shepherding the assembly of God is, and who do not confuse it with any other aspect of the shepherd service that is needed.
I commend these thoughts to the brethren. As I have said, I have my own local responsibility in this place, but I would like to be in the course of shepherding the assembly of God in the spirit of Psalm 23. After all that the saints have been through and all that they have suffered in going through it, “then was I in his eyes as one that findeth peace”, and that is touched with the fulness that He brings in as He furnishes green pastures and still waters and a table in the presence of her enemies. Well, beloved, may the Lord just help us to consider these things for the benefit of what remains in our localities, for His name’s sake.
Address in London
18 August 1973