Jeremiah 23

Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the Lord. Therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the Lord. And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase.

I left you yesterday with the questions about how we see others and how we see ourselves. This morning as I thought about it, the word authentic came to mind. That word does not exist in the bible but doing that word search came up with a suggested reading. This from Jeremiah is that suggestion.

Failing to be authentic misleads people. We cannot see who others are clearly if they are not authentic and the same goes for us. Scatter and destroy seem to be serious results for a lack of authenticity but being a pastor is serious business, hence the serious results.

Another search at bible.org refers us to these verses.

Colossians 1:4-8 English Standard Version

4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth,

Matthew 7:20

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

What did Jesus mean by that?

2 Corinthians 5:16

Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.

Perhaps we should know each other in the same manner in which we know Christ.

John 14:9

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

Do we see Christ in each other? Or do we only know each other by our flesh?

Philippians 3:13

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

I focus at times on what Paul went through in his calling. We all know the story, the hardships, the house arrest, the prison time, even his death. It seems like he accepted that with a grace that took an enormous amount of faith.

We are not by any means another Paul. To quote a line from Game of Thrones, “We will never see his like again.” The opening verse uses the term straining forward because we will find that when we are doing Kingdom work the enemy will provide the resistance. Satan opposes every good thing in God’s plan for us and if we do not feel at least some resistance in doing God’s will, then we might want to do a self-check.

Some time ago I observed what could be considered pew potatoes. It is a term I heard about some people who come to hear the message and do nothing more within the church to serve in any capacity. That is judgmental because we have not made them a sufficient part of our lives to see what they do for God outside the building.

We come with a check engine light. It is called a conscience. We had one before we came to Christ and we have one after coming to Christ. It may have been what caused us to surrender to Christ in the first place.

Psalm 37:37

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

Please note that it is the end of man is peace but this does not denote the struggle it took to get there. I cannot speak to every situation. Each of us has their own struggle and my only advice in this arena of conscience is to seek peace rather than comfort.

A dear friend had written some time ago about being a tool for God. Some of us are like rasp files needed to knock of sharp edges off a stone. Then later another that is fine sandpaper will come along to polish that stone into a jewel.

I always related to the iron sharpens iron verse where sometimes I am the hammer and sometimes I am the anvil. I never see myself as the sword.

How do we see others? How do we see ourselves?