SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/25/2019 10:16 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “Explanation of a Pastor/Teacher”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
4:11
Message of the verses: “11 And He gave
some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as
evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,”
We
have and will continue to look at the office of Pastor/Teacher, and as I look
at the many pages that John MacArthur has written about this in his commentary
it will take us a very long time to finish this section, but I might add it
should be profitable for all of us.
We
begin today by looking at the Greek word “Poimen”
and this is the word translated as pastor, or shepherd and it is used a number
of times in the NT; however Ephesians 4:11 is the only place in the KJV where
it is translated “pastor.” All other
times it is translated as shepherd.
It
is interesting that two of the three times that this word is used it in the
epistles, poimen refers to
Christ. Let us look at Hebrews 13:20-21
“20 Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep
through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, 21 equip
you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in
His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.
Amen.” The highlighted word “Shepherd”
is the word poimen. One more from 1
Peter 2:25 “For your were continually straying like sheep, but now you have
returned to the Shepherd [poimen] and
Guardian [episkopos] of your souls.”
MacArthur
writes “In Ephesians 4:11, pastor (poimen)
is used with the word teacher. The Greek construction there indicates that
the two terms go together, and we might hyphenate them in English as
pastor-teacher. The emphasis is on the
pastor’s ministry of teaching.”
I
have to say that this next paragraph in MacArthur’s commentary brought up some
bad memories from the pastor that I sat under for five years and finally had to
leave, and one of the many reasons was that he was the opposite of what this
following paragraph describes. “Poimen,
then, emphasizes the pastoral role of caring and feeding, although the concept
of leadership is also inherent in the picture of a shepherd. The focus of the term poimen is on the
leader’s attitude. To be qualified as a pastor, a
man must have a shepherd’s caring heart.” I am so very blessed to have a pastor that I
sit under that fits these qualifications seen in this paragraph.
We
will now begin to look at the Greek word for Elder which we did mention
earlier. Presbuteros is used about seventy times in the NT, and like zaqen (which means “aged,” or
“bearded”), sab (which means “gray-headed”) and our English word elder, the
term presbuteros refers to mature age.
We find this in Acts 2:17 where Peter is preaching and quotes from Joel
2:28 “And your old men shall dream dreams.”
Now the Hebrew word for “old men” in Joel is zaqen and the Greek word that is used in Acts is presbuteros. Used in that sense, elder does not constitute
an official title but simply means an older man.
Now this word is used in the feminine
for in 1 Timothy 5:2 to refer to older women, women who are there contrasted
with younger women. Paul writes [Appeal
to] the older women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters, in all
purity.” In that context the term again
simply signifies a mature age, not an office in the church.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I am thankful for learning all of these terms
and what they mean as I have never really studied them like this in the past.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Humility is something that Jesus was and
something that I as a follower of His need to have.
Today’s quotation and this one is from
Charles H. Spurgeon: “The Lord gets His
best soldiers out of the highlands of affection.”
3/25/2019 11:12 AM
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