[The following exhortation was the devotion I gave this morning to the Ashland County Ministerial Association]
"His watchmen...are all silent dogs, they cannot bark"
This morning I would like to speak to you about the lost art of pastoral barking. That is to say we as pastors are to have a prophetic voice within society. We must be willing to speak out against evil and alert the people to the errors pervading our culture today.
Isaiah’s day was a lot like our own. Both are characterized by a mass turning away from God. In this passage though, Isaiah zeros in on that which is main cause of that apostasy. You will notice that Isaiah didn’t criticize the media or even the people who were turning away from God. He laid the blame at the feet of the leaders (or watchmen) of Israel. Apostasy had overrun the church because the leaders were like "mute dogs."
The one characteristic that is unique to a dog is its bark. When God created mangy mutts, he made them to be guardians. God instilled in them a territorial spirit. So when a foreigner treads upon their sacred ground, their innate response is to sound an alarm. It doesn’t matter if it is a 200 pound Mastiff or a Chuwahwah, that’s just the nature of being a dog. He is going to bark.
And as God’s word tells us here, that same protective spirit is to characterize every man who has been appointed to serve God as a pastor. God requires that we bark. When error begins to intrude upon the people of God or whenever it poses a threat to our ranks, we are not doing our duty unless we sound the alarm.
They say that silence is sometimes deafening, but the truth is that silence is deadening. Silence among clergymen feeds apostasy. Just as the lack of the presence of any retardant will allow a fire to increase and consume much of the area in its way, the absence of righteous voices crying out against sin will allow God’s sheep to be swept away in the rage of humanism and secularism that is pervading our culture.
Brothers, that is something with which we need to come to grips. If the people of God turn away from the Lord, we are the ones to be blamed. We cannot blame Hollywood. I know that they never stop in cranking out their secularist agenda and they pump it right into people’s homes. But the blame does not rest there. The blame does not lie with the government either, no matter how much we would like to point the finger at them. Lord knows they are not doing anything to preserve the faith. We cannot even lay the blame upon the individuals that turn away from God. Certainly God will hold them each accountable for their actions, but when it comes down to it we are the ones that are responsible. We are the gates through which apostasy must pass. And the only way to keep it from flooding our pews is to begin to bark.
We are called by God to stand up and speak against error. We are to make sure that those who are given to our charge know that this thing that encroaches upon us is evil and a danger to our spiritual well being.
Hopefully you recognize that the burden rests with you. Hopefully you also recognize that this may mean you may have to adjust your means of communication from time to time. When it says we are to be like a barking dog, it means we must do more than whimper or yip. We are to hate evil. As a result we must be strong in our denunciation of it.
Sometimes that might mean that our tone will need to be a little more ferocious. Or maybe it will be that our choice of words may have to be a little more provocative. When a dog barks at an intruder, he is not going to use soft tones, is he? He is going to get a little feisty. He is going to snarl and perhaps froth a bit. And the closer the intruder gets the louder and more turbulent he is going to become.
Of course, every situation needs to be evaluated as to how loud your bark should be and what kind of rhetoric you should use. But I want you to realize that provocative language is permissible (and sometimes required!). Sometimes it must be said of us, “His bark is worse than his bite.” Indeed, we must be willing to be assertive so as to protect the people of God.
Now, I know that someone may pull me aside after our time together and say, “Well that’s not very loving.” Or if you get out there and start doing the work of a divine K-9, you will have someone say that to you or about you. But let’s go back to our dog. Is the dog being unloving when he growls or bears his teeth? In all reality, his bark is an evidence of his love. He barks because he loves his master and his master’s family. The ferocity he displays flows from his devotion and faithfulness.
If you do not have it in you to bark, I believe that it is evidence that you are not fit for your position. A man who loves the lord cannot help but bark.
If you need more evidence of this, you only have to look at the Lord Jesus. He is the one who fulfils this passage. Being familiar with the New Testament, I’m sure you are aware that Jesus never rolled over and played dead. He was willing to become feisty from time to time. Everybody knew where he stood.
Why did he rail at the religious leaders of his time? Why did he sometimes look and sound like a madman? It was because he loved his master and he loved his master’s family. The only reason he became so incensed and austere was because he was devoted to the Father.
I pray that you might have that same devotion. I pray that you would have the Spirit of Christ living within you: that you might be the watchdogs of your churches and of this town. And even this Lord’s Day as you stand in the pulpit, may it be that God gives you the ability to lift up a holy howl.
No comments:
Post a Comment