I chose this text concerning Jehoiada for two reasons. The first is that after the celebrations of a week ago -- all so beautifully, skillfully, graciously done -- I feel that I too am a pastor to kings and queens! In that sense, perhaps only in that sense, I stand in Jehoiada's shoes.

But, Scott's video also reminded me most beautifully and powerfully of the march of the years, of people who were with us and are now in the grave. One of them was Jo DeYoung, whom many of you will remember most fondly, a gracious, patient Christian woman who beautifully displayed the fruit of a lifetime in the covenant. Her father, a Rev. Mr. Breen -- the Dutch would say "brain" --, an emigre from Holland, was the pastor of the CRC in Lynden, Washington, in the early years of this century. Those were the days when the worship of that church was still in the Dutch language. I remember going to visit Mrs. DeYoung at her apartment near PLU to read the Dutch Bible together. Anyway, her father is buried in the cemetery in Lynden and on his gravestone the congregation had inscribed the epitaph that is given to Jehoiada here in v. 16: "He did much good in Israel, both toward God and toward his temple."

What a grand account of a minister's life. Something for all ministers to aspire to. Something I aspire to. But, I have wondered about Jehoiada. Was he a man far, far above me that the Scripture should say such a thing about him? Or might he have been a man at least somewhat like me? The Scripture says little enough about him and about his character and the quality of his ministry. I have taken some hope from 22:11 and the fact that the Scripture gives the credit for saving the baby prince, Joash, from the wrath of Athaliah, the wicked queen mother, not to Jehoiada, as we might have expected, but to his wife, Johosheba. Perhaps Jehoiada was a man whose wife made him much better than he would have been by himself. That would make him more like me. Perhaps he was just an ordinarily faithful man and minister, whom God graciously used to accomplish something in the days of Joash.

In any case, the situation wasn't in those days so different from ours. It was a day of small things -- indeed, the reform under Joash eventually petered out into nothing, good and right as it was in its own day. But it was a day of small things. And faithful people made the most of those small things.

I cannot say that we are making the very most of our day of small things. I think we are well aware that we can do much more than we have done. As individuals and as a church the Lord deserves much more from us than he has so far received. We can even rather clearly identify some of our shortcomings. But, I am grateful to be able to say that as I watched Scott's wonderful video I had reason after reason to give thanks for a great multitude of blessings that Christian folk in this congregation have faithfully sought through the years and have found. You have been a faithful people in so many ways. And God has proved his love and faithfulness to you times without number. There were some bittersweet moments watching those pictures, flashing by one after the other as they did. We saw some whom we loved and are now in the grave; some who have moved to other parts and we miss with a sweet longing, and a few, thankfully a very few, who are lost to us for sadder reasons. But so many, so many upon whom the Lord had poured out his saving grace, who have, by that grace walked with him and with the saints here in faithfulness and love, and have abundant reason to thank God that all of his promises are "Yea and Amen" in Jesus Christ.

So many, especially our children, who have come to faith in the Savior in our midst. Who have taken their first steps in the life of faith and have through the years grown up to run the straight race.

I have been made to think many times and deeply over these last days of my responsibilities as your minister and how my obligation to you has been deepened by your affection and appreciation. I was glad to have David Wells speak Sunday evening last of congregations praying for their minister, for his sake as well as for their own.

The old writers used to say "Lectio, meditatio, oratio faciunt theologum." "Reading, meditation, and prayer make a minister." Well, I have the reading, though not, as you might think, as much as I could and should have. I have something less of the meditation, and considerably less prayer than is needed and much less than I desire. If you pray for me, pray especially for the spirit and the grace and the discipline of prayer and fulfillment in the life of prayer. The ministry is a sacred responsibility and who is sufficient for these things?

But the ministry is also a calling with exquisite compensations.

It has an entire set of intellectual compensations for a man like me. Morning, noon, and night my Bible is in my hands. The study of God's Word is my daily responsibility and I have time to do it. This is remarkable. What many of you would give your eye-teeth to have, time to study God's Word, I am given with pay! And then still more money by a generous congregation to buy more books to aid in that Bible study.

And there are mighty spiritual compensations or rewards in the ministry. John Newton says somewhere that he wonders what kind of Christian he would be if God hadn't made him a minister. The constant pressure of the work, the need to set an example for others, the expectations that people have of you, the knowledge that others are taking note of your life, the necessity to achieve what prayer alone can obtain, the sense of God's judgment being rendered directly on one's work, the experience of proclaiming the gospel day after day, and of preaching it on the Lord's Day, the unique experience and privilege of leading a congregation in worship, the vantage point the ministry gives me to see God at work in the lives of so many others and the Word of God and the love of Christ proved and demonstrated in so many ways before one's eye, in all of these ways and others, the life and work of the ministry is a spur to faith.

And, in some ways, a long ministry is especially so. In a two or three or four year ministry one can live off first impressions. No one gets to know you all that well and then off you go to make first impressions on another congregation. But after ten years and fifteen and twenty the warts begin to show, the shortcomings are spotted, reservations that were kept at bay by good will are confirmed against hope by repeated observation. The stages of life come and go and the fruit of one's walk with God through many years appears or fails to appear. I know it has been so for you in regard to me. But, that is not bad -- that is good. No one said we were not and would not remain sinners while in this world. And I am forced by that fact, that you see and know me, to care about my life before God and before all of you and to care that I do not allow myself to stop in mid-stream but that for my ministry's sake and your sake and God's name's sake I continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of God, lest, to my judgment and loss, all of you be put to sleep by my example and by my tiresome preaching of old and tired thoughts unrenewed by new and vital experiences of the grace of God and the presence of Christ.

Those are just a few of the immeasurable compensations of the ministry.

But there is another that I have been chiefly thinking of these last days. It is a great privilege to pastor a congregation of people whose hearts are tender to God, who love his Word and want to know it and obey it, who are easily brought to acknowledge wrong and who genuinely hunger and thirst for righteousness. That has been my privilege for these twenty years and perhaps no one in this room knows better than I how great a privilege it is. It is also a privilege to pastor a congregation full of folks with splendid gifts that God himself has given them and that they cheerfully use for his sake. The celebration was a beautiful illustration of how chock-full of such people this congregation is.

William Gouge, the great Puritan and Westminster Divine, was the pastor of St. Ann's, Blackfriars in London for some 45 years. When he was offered so-called "higher" positions, he always replied that it was his ambition to go from Blackfriars to heaven! I know something of why he felt as he did and why he never was much tempted to think of another charge as a "higher position."